I like today......*VBS*

Yes, I know it's Friday...and I like that.I also like Thursday, Monday, Wednesday.. all the days! I like my life. Not everything that happens during any given day...but the ordinary days carry me through the rough ones.
Ordinary things that are happening today..as in the first picture..LOL. I've been gathering up the 'gifting' items for packaging..assembly line me! This morning I put a pile of nice freshing washed 'things' on the back of the couch, while looking for quilt blocks...a big mistake! As you can see, you might be getting cat hair along with your gift..LOL.
Having found the blocks, I sat down at the dining room table(temporary sewing station) and did the first part of the "webbing" on the Bear Paw blocks. Not the 2 orphans I mentioned over at Riding the Orphan Train, but the 16 that have been 're-purposed' into a 48" X 48" quilt top. Borders will be added, and then who knows?
It was fun to web them, I use the same webbing method that Bonnie describes at Quiltville. I learned it from Betsy, who saw it in a book or magazine. It's nice because in a short time you have ALL your blocks connected to each other, and if you have to pack(or pick)up and leave, it's mostly a top.
This is how you do this....
...lay out the blocks on the floor or the bed. When you are satisfied,stack them, beginning by putting #1 from the first row on top of the #2 from the first row. Keep stacking one on top of the other until you have a pile of #1s(from each row) in that stack.
I suggest pinning them together at this point, indicating which is the top left corner, and labeling the row #. Then you take the top block from the next row, reading across the layout, and put that #1 block on top of the 2nd one in that row, top to bottom. Do that for all the rows, til you have a row of stacks numbered from #1 to # whatever(in my case, #4).
Then you can stack and store(if they are pinned and have labels, OR: you can carry pile #1 and pile #2 to the sewing machine and begin sewing. Put a stack on each side of you..left#1, right #2. Sew the first #1 to #2. DON'T CLIP THE THREAD. Feed the second block in the first stack to the second block in the other stack. Continue like that til all the #1's are sewn to all the #2's. Then without cutting anything but the thread where it comes off the machine, reach up and grab the start....I usually leave the thread dangle up there to indicate it's the top. Take your #3 pile, place it on your right, and sew the first #3 pile block to the side of #2, which is attached to #1. Repeat all the way down. Now your web will begin to look look like X X X
X X X
X X X .
The sides of the blocks will be joined but NOT the bottom edge to the next blocks top edge.
When you have all of them webbed one direction(as in my picture) you can carry it to the ironing board and press the seams, alternating between 'to the right, and to the left'.
Then it's just a question of flipping that first row over, and sewing across where the top and bottoms come together < >. I usually press again once this seam is sewn, so I know which way to flip the next one. All of this doesn't really take that long, and I make less mistakes than when I try to sew rows the other way. Try it on something small like a baby quilt. Lattice can be added the same way, but would have to be sewn to the bottom of each block before the first part of the webbing.

Now I'm off to do the very ordinary, vacuum, clean the bathroom and make the berry jam and then scrub up the cucumbers for those pickles..*VBS*