When Hobby Becomes Mission

Good morning, my friends. It’s another morning of writing fast. Matthew and I are meeting up this morning. I’ll say more about that in a minute. 

It was a busy sewing day yesterday. With the Cats in Pajamas soon to be rehomed, it was time to think seriously about the next quilt in line to be quilted. Grandpa’s Bridges is next. This should be pretty easy. Already I have some ideas about it, and it’ll all be doable.

Yesterday I picked out the threads I want to use. The threads I’m about to show you all come courtesy of my quilting fairy godmother, Ila. Thank you, Ila. For the embroidered blocks, I’ll use this off white.

For the outer border and sashings, I’ll use this pretty variegated King Tut thread. Are these colors perfect, or what?

For the inner border and block borders, I’ll use this pretty brownish/rustish color. (I’m still not sure I will quilt the block borders. Sometimes I just have to wait and see what my hands decide.)

For the bobbin, I’ll use these. They’re different threads and different colors, but nearly indistinguishable. The back of this quilt is busy, and I will defy anybody to find a color change if I need to switch horses in the middle of the river. (It’s a quilt with bridges, right? How could I not use that horse/river metaphor?)

Okay, so that was my commitment for the “quilting” part of my day. I really wanted to get into the sewing room and work on the Zebra.

The second block for the third row was laid out. I just needed to sew it together.

And then I sewed, and sewed, and sewed my guts out until I’d completed the third row.

And there’s what I have of the Zebra so far.

Here’s where the title of this post comes in. Mike and I were talking about this the other night. If you’re a long-time blogging friend, then you know I keep a whiteboard listing of all my projects, and I have a workflow I follow pretty rigidly. I like having a lot of projects. It gives me lots of short-term goals to work on, and each project feels fresh whenever I work on it. Also, it keeps everything moving forward so that I don’t forget what I’m doing from one go-round to the next. 

Occasionally, though, a project comes along, and it causes me to shove everything else off the table and focus on it obsessively until it’s finished. Generally, these tend to be special requests from friends or family members. Baby quilts are a good example. Quilting is my hobby. But when I get in this mode of full steam ahead on a project, it becomes a mission. And all of that to say that my mission is only half accomplished. There is more to do. Oh, yes.

But I thought I might go insane if I sewed together any more squares for the day, and so I switched gears and traced the first stitchery for “Over the River and Through the Woods.” 

Happily, I can use that fabric I purchased for the Zebra, and then rejected. It’ll be great for this project. I was a little short on yardage. Fortunately, Meg Hawkey always had us cut generous backgrounds for embroidery. I cut my panels about an inch narrower on all four sides, and that gave me plenty of space to trace the design. They’ll be trimmed even more when they’re finished.

So, I traced the top scene. It took about an hour to cut the fabric and do all this tracing. I’m glad to have it done. 

I won’t start on that for a few more days. I’m still working on the Snow Days piece. And since I’m heading out early this morning, I don’t know if there will be time for any sewing today. Matthew and I are meeting up at a place called The Peculiarium. It’s billed as a museum of the “freaky but true.” Now, this I gotta see. We’ll get some lunch afterward. Should be fun.

Okay, then. It’s time to be on my way. Have a freaky day.