Tuesday 4 September 2012

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.

1 comment:

  1. Your quilting space looks very comfy, Krista. I need to clear some space around mine, but I'm like you. Love to be in front of the tv for something like this! Keep plugging away. And you're right, it's not a race!

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