Sewing Again

...and making some progress.

It's been a busy summer so far. Mostly, in a good way! Here are the highlights and lowlights and reasons I haven't been around:

Highlights: family vacation to Cape Cod, my son's 4th birthday and party, pre-school year-ending celebrations, family in town.

Lowlights: daughter's broken wrist (as seen in earlier post), followed immediately by daughter's broken big toe (unloading a dish from the dishwasher with her cast, the day before it was to come off!), a couple bouts of sickness (son), many doctors' visits.

This past week, my son has been sick, but because he's been napping, I've had a little more time to myself.

I made some more progress on the quilt:

 Oh, the quilting. It took a long time stippling this quilt. Maybe because I kept starting and stopping and being interrupted with life. It just felt like a long time going. But I did enjoy it, for the most part. Despite being plagued by tension issues seemingly throughout the process, I liked the care-free, unplanned movement of stippling. I liked wandering this way and that and not worrying about things too much. I learned a lot along the way too. I learned that I need to be patient. If I hurry too fast, the stitches get too long. I also learned which meandering patterns I liked better (the clover pattern; what looked like fat "L"s; and generally, larger figures). However, it was hard at times to move the quilt and my patterns ended up being smaller and more compact (ie., much more quilting and stitching than I needed to do). Also, the middle of the quilt was so very hard to move. I started at one end and worked to the other, and by the time I got to the middle, I really had to use my muscles. In fact, I worked up a bit of a sweat, and I consider myself in good shape! This was surprising to me. By the end, I felt like I accomplished something big. (And I guess I did.)

 I don't look forward to making binding, but it went rather quickly this time. Perhaps this is because I was able to cut, sew, and press it all during one afternoon nap.

 Now I'm putting it together and hope to update the blog again sooner (than later) this time. I'm excited to be coming (hopefully) to a close with this quilt. It's been fun, but I'm ready to finish. I'm ready to move on to some smaller projects. Maybe because it's the summer. I think that may be it. I have other things on my mind. I wonder if this is a common theme in the quilting blogosphere? (or just me?)