Yup, I crossed one item off my list.  Two weeks in a row, wow.

We just don’t need to talk about how long it’s been there. But when push comes to shove sometimes you just have to put your nose down do what you’ve been dreading most.

I turned this humongous, way too big and heavy, 40# tarp…

Into this…

A custom fitted, hot tub cover’s, cover.

That also included having to clean my studio so I had room to work on the stiff, unweilding piece.  It tried to knock everything it bumped into, to the floor.  Hubby had to help support the weight of it to keep it from pulling my needle into a breakable position. Thank goodness I have a huge table to work on, but still.  No fun.

Yeah, we’re those kind of people that shut our tub down in the winter…  Strange, I know, but it doesn’t get used, so why not save the electricity and chemicals??  Better ways to spend my money, I say.  And if I could have bought one of these covers, I gladly would have.  Apparently it’s our brainchild.  Someone should run with the idea and make a fortune.

Between the 1o0+ inches of snow and the southern exposure and wind, yes, we should talk about the wind, lots of wind, our hot tub cover would never be able to withstand the elements and keep the tub dry, on the inside, without protection over the insulated cover that is used year round.  The last one, I made, lasted 7-8 years before it got so thin in spots that I feared I had waited too long.  I was glad when we pulled it off in the spring that all was as we left it.   Knowing this tarp is much heavier I’m hoping to have bought myself plenty of extra time for more entertaining things than cleaning a wet,  mildewy tub….  Glad to have that chore off my back.

Speaking of entertaining things….  Like making double fold, continuous bias binding?  Yeah, fun, you know it is!  Taking a square yard of fabric, cutting it corner to corner, putting it back together in a whole new shape and cutting round and around into one really long 2 1/2″ strip.  Then pressing it in half lengthwise. I’m getting dizzy thinking about it, but yeah, I do that for every quilt I make.  No strip pieced binding for me. Grandma told me otherwise.  I listened to my Grandma…..

Sometimes I wish I hadn’t…..  If you do binding, this way, you know what I’m talking about.

What do you do for your binding?  Should I be doing it another way?  What say ye??

And while marking and cutting binding it gives you lots and lots of time to think….

I have been thinking a lot about how to quilt my version of this Moda Sunkissed Squares quilt.  I started it a while back and after finishing the top, I put it away to work on other projects.  Now it’s time has come.

Decisions, decisions…

Lots of sketching, coloring, drawing, trying different ideas…  This quilt just called for some kind of straight line quilting.  I went with a square spiral.  It’s fast quilting, that’s for sure.  For the first time, ever, I’m timing how long it takes to hand quilt a project. This should be interesting.

If all goes as planned, I hope to have it finished next week.

If you got through this long-winded post then you must really be bored and ought to pop over to Freshly pieced and see what Lee and everyone else has been up to this week!

Make it a great one!