Adventures in Spray Basting

I'm on maternity leave right now, and was expecting to be completely sleep-deprived and generally barely-functional.  To my cautious delight, however, this baby is not opposed on principle to sleeping, and often does it voluntarily.

Knowing I'd have a tiny one, I sat out this round of Sock Madness and braced myself to go on another crafting hiatus.   It's a special kind of pain to spend all your time looking at quilting blogs and Ravelry while not being able to work on anything.  These are the periods during which my to do list explodes into hopeless territory. 

The fact that we've just moved into a new house, with acres of bare wall just asking to be covered in vibrant fabric isn't helping. 

So, what the heck.  In one 30-second window, I brought out the scrap bin.  In another, got out and assessed my white fabrics.  In another, picked one and took it to the work table.  Piece by tiny little piece, I cobbled together the top of a ticker tape quilt, meant to hang between the kitchen and living room. 

Now, if you ever plan to make a ticker tape quilt, you should really plan to assemble the quilt pieces (background fabric, batting, backing) before determining the placement of all the little squares.  Really.  I didn't, which resulted in a stupid process of trying to move the top + tapes onto a spray-basted piece of batting, then lots of swearing and cursing of myself, then consulting my camera to realize I hadn't taken a picture of the completed layout, then more cursing. 

I could've waited to place everything until I had another pair of adult hands around to help, or I could've waited until I had spray basting to start putting the whole quilt together, but I've decided that if progress is going to be made, I must do what I can with what I have when I have it.  Lots of cursing it is, then. 

Also in the name of many tiny steps, I've picked my hand quilting project back up.  I don't have tons of quilting UFOs, and the two others that come to mind are gigantic projects, not fit for quick wall coverings.  This one is a Hawaiian quilt I started way back in 2004, or 2005, or thereabouts.  It was done in a weeklong workshop and had only the outline of the applique and the first echo completed.  I knew I was waaaaay out of practice with hand stitching, but if this thing is ever going to get done, I've got to keep moving forward, so I just accepted that there are going to be some visible learning curve stitches.  And there are.  But, the great thing about this type of quilt is that the effect of so much echo quilting is that you don't notice that the second ring looks like it was done by someone who hadn't hand quilted in seven years. 

There's a lot left to do here, but seeing progress really helps.  

Happy crafting!