My Goals For August and Stitching Road Blocks

With the prospect of being at home a bit more this month I feel a greater enthusiasm for setting some goals and achieving them.  Despite it still being a mess, I’m looking forward to playing in the sewing room, and as the weather will hopefully provide a little more warmth towards the end of the month, I hope to be able to sit outside with some hand stitching or knitting.  We’ll see.

So, to start, here are my stitching goals.

ONE MONTHLY GOAL AND CHOOKSHED STITCHER’S GOAL

Once again, these goals will be combined.  Deana has selected the number 3, which is “Laundry Basket Quilts 2023 Spring Mystery Quilt - Progress”.  I’m quite happy for this one to pop up, as it was originally to be my goal last month, but wasn’t portable, so swapped with the EPP hexies.

I am up to the stage of preparing the final border, after a big effort at Scrub Stitchin’ to get all the applique stitched and the four quadrants joined together.  I am planning on making the border from half square triangles.  I have to work out the maths to see what size I will do and if a narrow border is also required. This is a quilt I have enjoyed making and would like to get finished.  Whether it will get quilted this month, who knows.  

My goal is to complete the quilt top.  Anything more is a bonus.

Pop over to Stories From the Sewing Room and Dreamworthy Quilts to see what the others have selected for August.

RAINBOW SCRAP CHALLENGE

The nominated colour this month is orange.  I will make my usual split nine patches, as well as a hexy flower.  I’m not quite sure what I will do with my fish this month.  You see, I already have a few orange fish and September’s fish is a set of tropical fish.  I would really like to do one of those in orange.  So, do I just make two fish this month with orange accents, or wait until next month and swap the colours over?  I’m kind of leaning towards the latter. 

BATIK FISH

I will definitely be making my two batik fish, and possibly a couple of extras.

15 MINUTES A DAY

I really hope to get my stats up a bit in August.  My newfound enthusiasm should help here.

My other stitching goals are:

• Work on a donation project - Half Square Triangle Baby Quilt
• Use Monique - I really want to get the little Half Square Triangle Baby Quilt done.  This was supposed to happen in May.
• Knit or crochet something - I would like to finally make a little progress on my plum jumper and my crochet rug.
• Work on a WIP - that is my Batik Fish and the Laundry Basket Mystery Quilt
• Work on a UFO - that is also my Half Square Triangle Baby Quilt - It will really be good to put this one to bed.
• Hand stitching - That little Blue Sampler Stitchery really won’t take much to finish, so that is a goal.  Also, I would like to progress the Natalie Bird Pincushion.  I’d like to restitch the saying and start on the little appliqué. 
• Complete something - Yep, the Half Square Triangle Baby Quilt and the Blue Sampler Stitchery.

My other goals for the month are rather simple.

• Write my Isle of Man blog posts - I really want to get this down before I forget the details.
• Read a book - surely I can manage that this month.
• Try a new recipe - I’ve been rather slack in this department for quite a few months. I have a plan.
• Have a fun day out - I have at least one that I know of.

Now for the road blocks…..  

One of the things that sapped my enthusiasm was hitting a couple of road blocks with my projects.  

Firstly, the little crochet rug, that was going along so swimmingly.  When I crocheted the blocks together the joining came out rather tight and the blocks are not sitting flat.  It looks fine in the photo, but believe me, it isn’t.  As it is acrylic, blocking won’t help, so there is nothing for it but to separate all the blocks and rejoin them by stitching rather than crochet.  The worst bit will be undoing where I wove in all the ends.  Once that bit is done, it will be a very simple process to pull the crochet out.  That may be a job for sitting out in the sun on a nice warm day, or alternatively, for sitting in front of the heater.

The second road block is my Blue Quilt.  When I added the checkerboard border it transpired that the border was just a tad too large.  I gently eased it onto the previous round, but it was fluted.  My grand plan was to then gently ease it back onto the next narrow border, but that didn’t work and it is still fluted.  I need to remove the narrow border, then the checkerboard border.  As the blocks are just one inch finished and it is a checkerboard, I can’t simple remove one block.  I think I will have to separate the appliqué sections from the pieced sections and just trim a smidgeon here and there so that they don’t look too wonky.  It will take time and care, but will be worth it in the end.  I just have to be in the right mood for that one.

The third one I have mentioned before.  My Santa cross stitch ended up out of whack and would look silly, so I have abandoned it.  I may restart him, as he is rather cute.

I don’t want any of these road blocks to prevent them from being completed.  I feel they are a monkey on my back at the moment.  They won’t beat me, especially as they are mostly nearing the finish line.

By the way, I don’t expect these to be resolved in August.

I know my goals for this month are rather ambitious.  I’m looking forward to trying to achieve them all.