Change of pace

The two parts of making a quilt -- piecing the top, then sandwiching and quilting it -- require two very different processes, mindsets and workspaces.  When you finish one, you need to clean up all three areas, literally or metaphorically, before you can move on to the other.

Here's my sewing machine space in piecing mode, with a cutting mat and huge pile of stripes at hand, some cut wide for the "bricks," some cut narrow for the "mortar" in my piecing technique.

Underneath the machine's deck is a pile of tiny, tiny bits, probably too small for sane people to keep, but I always have a parallel project going, making little compositions onto my sew-off squares, and use the tiny bits for this purpose.

It took a day's work to get all the strips neatly folded and stowed away, then to get the large work table cleaned up from cutting.  All the uncut fabric had to be folded up and put away, then the table cleared off so the quilt could be laid out and sandwiched.

The card table that I set up behind my sewing machine to support the quilted bundles had also silted over since I had last needed it, and I had to put down a big plastic tablecloth to cover all the bumps and edges of the varying surfaces that could snag a tied quilt bundle.

But finally all my excuses were gone, and I had to actually start quilting.