Keeping up with sewalongs

 

A few years ago, I signed up to too many sewalongs and they became a stress rather than enjoyable. It is in my nature to want to keep up with the schedule and print out instructions and sew the blocks immediately. If I fall behind there is every chance that I will abandon the project. How do you deal with participating in sewalongs?

I do find sewalongs very enticing and I have to resist the temptation to sign up. Sewing along with my daughter is the same. She proceeds at speed and I hate being left behind, especially as I am usually quick myself, but I do also like to be accurate.

I took my Folk Art Sampler to last weekend's retreat and I am thrilled with my progress. I finished one more rabbit for week 4. I went wrong and the eye was upside down again. 

With week 4 finished, I moved on to week 9 and the dachshund. The block bows a little in the middle so some remedial work will be necessary to add some wider borders and then trim it down.

I needed more yellow fabric to finish the week 11 vertical butterflies. Fortunately, the yellow fabric arrived early last week.

Yesterday saw the release of the Ohio Star II block and the start of week 12. I was keen to get the blocks cut out at retreat, and I managed to cut out all four blocks, even though only two are required for this week. I plan to piece the star blocks this week and then finish all of the acorn and bee blocks.  Excitingly I could then piece some blocks together around the central star. Next week's blocks are the squirrels. I should then be able to keep up until we go to Pour l'Amour du Fil in Nantes at the end of April.

This sewalong was with The Quilt Show in 2014 and still needs to be quilted and I did fall massively behind with this project. The main reason was that I didn't like the technique for the blocks edged in green, but several years later, I decided the designer probably knew best!!