Quilty Update

I finally got back into my sewing room this weekend.  It is the first time in about two or three months that I've spent any real time in there.  It felt good to be sewing again.  :c)

I made some progress on the Mariner's Compass quilt that I've been working on.  The quilting is slow-going as it is lots of little tiny pebbles.  However, so far it has been worth the effort.  I used wool batting on this quilt from Quilter's Dream, which gives a nice puffiness to the minimally quilted areas.  I'm also using Superior Threads' So Fine in the top and BottomLine in to the bobbin.  The denseness of the quilted portions really allows the points of the compass to pop-up


I'm really loving the texture that the pebble quilting is giving on this quilt.  The little circles really offset the straight lines of the rest of the quilt.


Can't help myself... another close-up picture.  :c)


So aside from stressing about work the past few months and not getting into my sewing room.... I have actually been exercising a bit more.  I realize during the summer that I just wasn't happy with where I was in terms of body size, weight, etc.  I finally decided to do something about it.  It may sound weird, but I went out and purchased a FitBit.  I got the Flex version as I wanted something that was easy to carry around with me.  I always had trouble with pedometers that either clipped on the waist or went in a pocket as I don't typically have pockets on my clothing for work and the waist option was just annoying.

The first week or so I simply wanted to track how much I was actually walking without changing any of my existing habits.  I was surprised to find that I wasn't walking nearly as much as I thought I was.  All my "running" around at work was really just going from meeting to meeting and then sitting for an hour or more.  Since then I've paid attention to how many steps I was getting in each day and forced myself to get up more frequently.  Instead of picking up the phone, I would walk to someone's desk.  Instead of parking close to the building, I parked further away.

I'm happy to say that with tracking my walking and a few small changes to my diet, I've been able to lose almost 20 pounds since September.  I'm routinely walking about 7,000 - 8,000 steps a day and when I go to the gym (2-3 times a week), I'm close to about 12,000 steps those days.  In the fall when the weather was nice, I was really walking a lot and most weekends had close to 20,000 steps on both Saturday and Sunday.  I'm looking forward to the spring weather in another few months and I hope I can increase my amount of walking again.

I saw that Karen posted about recently getting a FitBit.  I've had success with it and really like the features that the Apps have.  You can challenge friends during the week and on weekends to meet step goals for a day or for an entire week or just a weekend.  Sometimes its surprising how much a little thing like an easy way to track steps can help, but for me, it helped a lot.  It made me aware of the fact that I didn't walk nearly as much as I thought I did, which made me want to walk more.  I look forward to each day when I get that little buzz towards the end of the day signaling that I met my step goal.

So while you are sewing...don't forget to get up and walk every now and then!  :c)

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations