Good Intentions, Incomplete Follow Through

The Kansas City Project Linus chapter had a special blanket making day on Saturday to make weighted blankets for autistic and special needs children. I wrote about weighted blankets for autism early this month, so I won't cover details of the blankets here.

I spent last week getting ready for the blanket day, in between various computer and TV based sidetracks.

Debby gave some fleece back to me at our 3rd Sunday group meeting. This fleece came in early this year. A few of us worked on stitching it into blankets in February and a bunch went home with people to finish.

Debby's sewing machine did not like stitching on the fleece, so she brought these back. The blue and white one just needed the seams stitched down with some embroidery. The red, black and white one was still in 3 pieces.

My goals last week were:

1. Finish the fleece blankets Debby brought me and turn them in Saturday
2. Crochet edgings on 3 fleece blankets and turn them in Saturday
3. Finish the hat I was crocheting and start the next one
4. Pick fabric for 3 weighted blankets
5. Finish 1 weighted blanket, ready to turn in on Saturday
6. Start 2 weighted blankets: sew the side seams and iron under the ends so they are ready to add the Velcro and stitch the pockets on Saturday
7. Take fabrics scraps to Nancy on Saturday.
8. Watch the rest of the EQ7 videos
9. Write 3 or 4 blog posts

So how did I do?

1. Finished the 2 fleece blankets that Debby returned to me.

Crocheted edgings on 3 fleece blankets.
2. Turned in 9 fleece blankets on Saturday, including 4 that were finished before last week.
3. Finished crocheting hat #27 and started knitting the next one

Using jungle print with pink elephants. started a weighted blanket with a denim back. Did not get the vertical stitching from Velcro edge to Velcro edge done until our blanket making day on Saturday.

Started 2 weighted blankets using an aqua twill back. The fronts are 1) colorful bears on aqua and 2) cowboy hats on lime green.The side seams were stitched and the raw edges were ironed under ready to add the Velcro and stitch the pockets on Saturday.
4. I took the fabric scraps to Nancy. Nancy loves making string quilts and I love getting the scraps out of my house.
5. Watched the rest of the EQ7 videos
6. Only wrote 1 blog post, the 4th installment in the learning EQ7 series.
7. Spent way too much non-productive time sitting at the computer.

Between the TV and the computer, there are so many other things (time wasters) that are easier and/or more fun to do than writing a blog post. I had good intentions but lacked motivation.

There were about 20 people at our Saturday blanket day and about 30 or 40 weighted blankets were finished. I was busy working and failed to get any pictures.

Saturday evening I told my mom I don't ever want to do that again. 1) I don't get much pleasure from making the weighted blankets. Picking fabric is the only remotely creative thing about them. I'd rather crochet, knit or quilt. 2) I sewed for over 5 hours, sitting with my machine too high. The bed of my machine was at shoulder height and all the stitching lines were about 40 to 45 inches long, so there was a lot of fabric fed through the machine, over and over.

After I unloaded the car at home, I collapsed on the sofa and within a few minutes was too stiff and sore to move. It's been a long time since I've worked so long with my machine at such an un-ergonomic height. Definitely not a good thing.