{*Unfinished Business*}

I hate unfinished business. Sewing projects that remain in my house, unfinished, stress me out.

Today marks day one of my quilting retreat and from 1 until after we eat dinner, we can work on *anything*. That's about 6 hours of uninterupted sewing time. This is a big deal. Normally I don't get large chunks of time like that.

During those 6 hours I'm going to try and finish things. My mixed tape quilt for one. I love love love the quilt, HATE HATE HATE the sashing. The quilt has big enough borders that the color I chose just looks...off. But it's bugging me that I have a quilt top almost finished except that last bit, so I'm going to do that.

I also have a jelly roll of Neptune that I'd like to start into a beach/lake coin quilt. I need to think of a good size to make each strip. I think I also have enough linen to make that into a great quilt top!

Today is the day to just get stuff DONE. I have 14 more Heather Ross prints for my dream quilt that need to be made into geese. I'm not going to assemble that quilt until I have every single block done and a layout figured out. It just isn't a quilt made for rushing.

I guess I'm just anxious to finish projects so I feel like I'm accomplishing something. I start to get really annoyed if I'm working super hard but have nothing to show for it, lol. I'm totally all about instant gratification. Which clearly doesn't always happen.

And then theres the hexes. Wowzers. I think I'm making them faster than I have plans for! So the largest hexes are made from Moda's Sweet & Swell. Two charm packs of each collection. They are so bright and cheery together, so those will be made into a throw quilt. I know that much. I can't decide if I'll sash/border it with linen or muslin.

Then I have a charm pack of Hello Betty. If you haven't gotten a charm pack of this, you totally should. It's 60 charms. YEAH!!! 60!!! So I'm cutting each charm into 4 pieces so I'll have a total of 240 hexes. So so so cute. I might buy a second charm pack in mid-May depending on how fast these go. I'd love to make some zigzags out of them.

Also, I'm going to take an informal poll :)

Do you quilt your own quilts? Here in Humboldt County there are some amazingly affordable and talented quilters, one lady has been giving out coupons for $45 to quilt any size quilt. Wait. WHAT! That's insane!!! I wouldn't mind saving up my pennies to have someone quilt it for me, but at the same time, I'd feel kinda guilty. And I can't put my finger on why!

I'm so torn on quilting my own quilts. Both of my machines have semi shallow throats and the idea of stuffing a queen sized quilt in there and still quilting it nicely kinda terrifies me. I can't remember how deep the machine I'm getting back today is, so hopefully that might be an option. But I look at some quilts in blogland and flickr and wow...some people can do beautiful quilting jobs, I'm so curious if they do them on home machines or handiquilters or what!!!

I debated last night the pros and cons of just hand quilting my quilts. I'm totally in love with hand sewing, so hand quilting might be an option.

So yes! There you have it! Let me know if you machine quilt your work, send them off to be quilted or hand quilt!

But please, no bashing one form or the other, I know this can get heated and thats ok, but be nice!

Wish me luck on accomplishing a ton this weekend!!!