Hand Stitching

Bonnie has challenged us to get caught up on our handwork projects, by spending 1 hour a day with just a needle and thread - no sewing machine, just handwork.  I don't do a lot of handwork stitchery (hmm, knitting uses needles and "thread" - I wonder if that counts?  :) ), but as I contemplated my binding pile tonight I decided that maybe I should join in the party.

At a quick count, I have 3 quilts in my bin ready to hand stitch the binding.  2 upstairs waiting for binding to be attached, which I can then stitch down.  And if I keep at my long arm work, I have 5 more quilts ready to quilt, which will then need binding.  In just the 5 I have at the binding stage now, I figure I have at least 12 hours of handwork waiting for me.  Sounds about right for jumping on board Bonnie's handwork train.

Here is my sewing corner.  I do my handwork in the living room, so that I can watch TV while I do it.  In my sewing room I only have a DVD player so I can watch/listen to movies while I sew, but for handwork I prefer to be in front of live TV. If you look closely you can see my shelf of thread.  I have a bad habit of bringing a spool downstairs to do a binding and then never carrying it back upstairs.  So my collection grows :)

I'm not setting deadlines, I will just work on my binding as I generally try to do - a little bit every time I sit down in front of the TV.  About an hour a night is reasonable, but it will likely be 3 or 4 nights a week in reality, given other commitments and work (which I have to go back to today, after a 10 day vacation).

To start my first "simply needle and thread" episode, I sat down last night and stitched for about 45 minutes (watching part of the Big Bang Theory marathon).  For me, 1 length of thread takes about 1/2 hour to stitch - so 1.5 thread pieces done, which amounts to about 1/4 of the binding on the current baby quilt.  Like I said - 12 hours of work in front of me, on 5 small-ish quilts.  Is that fast or slow?  I don't know, and it's not a race so I just plug along at my own speed and hope to finish eventually :)

See who else is spending time with their needle and thread this month, over on Bonnie's blog.