Productivity & keeping time

My latest cot quilt is coming along nicely:

In response to Helen’s comment, when I am making these kind of quilts I make up batches of units and plonk them on the design wall as I go. These particular quarter circle units are made in pairs of positive and negative units. Accordingly, to ensure that colours and fabrics are scattered evenly across the quilt top, I don’t arrange the units in orderly rows from the outset. Basically, I try to avoid the same fabrics sitting next to one another.

As I create more units, I take the opportunity to move them around until I like the effect. I also often take photos of different layout options and audition them before I commit to sewing seams to make larger blocks. (Photos are also handy when the units fall down or I lose track of the sewing order. For other handy uses of a digital camera in quiltmaking, see this post.)

I can’t tell you how much time it has taken so far. However, if you are interested in keeping track of such things and have your computer “always on” in your workspace, then you may be interested in the free online timekeeping facility offered through www.clockworktimer.com. This facility allows you to create a list of tasks and digital stopwatch against each task. You can start/pause/stop the stopwatch and the timer shows the accumulated hours, minutes and seconds. It’s a good system as far as it goes but I would like a program that also records the stops/pauses, dates and brackets of time. If you know of (and have used) a freeware program with these features, I would be interested to hear your report.