Needle & Thread last update

In response to Bonnie's challenge to spend an hour each day sewing by hand in recognition of National Sewing Month I did pick up needle and thread and completed work on 8 tablerunners, blanket stitching on 4 basket/flower blocks for a wall hanging and the binding on two jelly roll quilts that I had made for upcoming shows. (about 20 hours)

 

Amelia Jelly Roll by Moda

Twirl Jelly Roll by Moda

I am also working on a quilting project with my son's class.  The students have chosen simple shapes like flowers, butterfly, elephant, dragon and have fused them onto a square.  Then another parent and I are sitting with each individual student to help them blanket stitch down their shape.  (about 9 hours)


The parents and teachers will also be making blocks and when they are all done I am to embroider names on each block and stitch them all together into a quilt to hang in the church hall...so I have lot's more planned hours of handstitching for the next several months.  I'll get pictures and post about this later.

I am still working on Bonnie's BowTie challenge from last year... she challenged us to make BowTie blocks as leader enders, but I was heading out of town at the time the challenge started and I decided to sew them by hand instead. To date, I have 81 blocks made and stitched into rows of 9.  I am now working on stitching the rows to complete the first quarter of my quilt.  I have cut and kitted up cheddar and colored fabric to make the next 81 blocks.   I had planned on lots of hand-sewing when I went to San Diego last week with my husband and son... I'll do a separate post on that trip later. I kitted up some of my bowtie parts to take with me, I used 2 small containers due to  limited space in my carry-on suitcase, and unfortunately, the container with the cheddar and the needles remained home... on my dining room table... while the container with my airplane approved scissor, thread and the colored squares came with me. (sigh)  It's difficult to sew bowties without the cheddar background or needles!  I don't know how I managed to separate them and not pack both, but I did. (0 hours)

On the positive side... I did catch up on a lot of reading with my Kindle.... thank you Bonnie for all the book suggestions you post.

In summary, while I didn't sew for an hour each day, I did manage approximately 29 hours of hand sewing during the month...so it averaged out to almost an hour each day.   Even though National Sewing Month is over, I will continue working on my hand-sewing projects and will add a line to my monthly totals posts for hours of hand-sewing to keep you updated on my projects. When the bowtie and class projects are done, I will pull out some of the applique UFOs that have been hanging around for more than a few years and get them done too!