Sew Day #2 – Raining outside, Sew a good day to Sew!

Cut Batting for Cloth Puzzle – Those 42 Half-Square Triangles.  I don’t have enough batting, will have to go back to my stash of odds & ends of leftover batting.

Trim Half-Square Triangles – those nasty little ‘dog-ears.’ I’ve paired HST & Plain Squares, and added the batting that I had cut.

Then I finished sewing the pockets on the Advent Calendar.  I had already stitched 19 pockets, but had 5 more to go.

Iron Top & Backing for Advent Calendar, Assemble Batting, Backing & Top Pillowcase Style – Stitch, Turn, Trim, Iron.  There is a lot of ironing to quilting.  Some people skip this step, but I find it really helps to keep the seams neat.

Quilt-As-Desired – Now that is a peculiar phrase.  I often spend a lot of time just imagining different scenarios of how to quilt a project. Sometimes I just do simple, straight lines.  But with the Advent Calendar, there are pockets, so I couldn’t just stitch across.  I decided to do Outline Quilting of the Train Cars – doesn’t go fast with all the twist & turns.

Next challenge – as this is not a bed quilt, it needs a means of hanging it.  So I made a small hanging sleeve for the back. I’m thinking of inserting a dowel rod and using those Command Removable Hooks.

I still have to stitch the hanging sleeve onto the back & I may add two more quilting lines around the outside border.  Think I’ll go to bed earlier tonight and get a fresh start in the AM.