A little bit of Zen

One of the good things about having quilting as a hobby is that you can do it in bits and pieces.  It's not like you have to make a whole quilt at one sitting.  It's also possible to work on several quilts at once and not be bored because they all use different fabrics and different designs.  There are also those days when some of the more tedious tasks of quilt-making can be done without a lot of thinking and calm the mind. At least, there are days when pressing and trimming make everything just a little better.  And they are steps in making progress toward finishing another quilt, after all.

There were a number of these tasks that I did last night, and it really was quite helpful. First, I made a couple of string blocks for an upcoming quilt:

I forgot to take a picture before I cut them, but these are 6 1/2 inch blocks cut in half across the strings.

Then, I worked on the mystery quilt a little more:

All of the Birds in the Air blocks are now finished, and I still have about 20 of the chevrons and another 40 of the 4-patches to make.

After that, I trimmed and pressed some half-square triangles. I tried a technique I read about at the Little Miss Shabby blog (and then also at Quiltville and several other places which sent it around the web). You can read about it HERE.

 It worked great! As you can see, I only had to trim a tiny bit off each one, but it was much easier to do before pressing them open than after.

I got about 50 or 60 of these done, but as you can see, there are tons left.  I think I started with more than 300, but by the time I got through these my mind was a lot calmer and I was done sewing for the day. The rest of them can wait for another day when I need to just not think too much.