Still sewing every day!

Piecing the backing.

Now I'm the Energizer Bunny, I keep going and going....

This is the 2nd "Another blue and white quilt" in rows. And the Harry Potter #6 book I listened to. I'm on #7 now, it's only 21 hours and 4 minutes of listening.
I started putting the borders on this evening.

Recycling old posts.

I'm finally working on the blue and white 9 patches from a Linda Dixon class from when I lived in Idaho.
Since I did the first half last summer, and I'm making a 2nd quilt top out of the other half of 9-patches I thought I'd just recycle that post since it looks identical!
http://debrasvedberg.blogspot.com/2009/06/another-blue-and-white-quilt.html

Trimming loose ends...

Yesterday I got the borders on that printed panel for Isaac. I would have finished it today, but I've been putting a sleeve on my "Another blue and white quilt" so that I can deliver it tomorrow to be in the White Bear Show in January. Tomorrow night is MCQ and our speaker is Tim Harding, and I'm betting it's gonna be a full house.

Binding is on.

After having a couple weeks of no productivity I have the binding on the quilt. Next is washing it.

Machine quilting straight lines...

Thank goodness for audiobooks...they pass the time while sewing straight lines across the quilt.

This is freakin' hilarious!

Listening to while machine quilting the blue and white quilt...

QUILT-BOY!

Isaac Svedberg helped me baste the quilt at Stephanies studio.
At home I showed Eric this picture on the camera.
Eric: "Quilt Boy."
Me: "QUILT BOY! That's great, I'm going to put that on my blog!"
Isaac immediately says to Eric: "I'll get you in your sleep!"
LOL!

Melange a du plus grand nombre

I crazy pieced a back for the blue and white quilt top. Why buy fabric when you can use a melange of ugly fabric? Along the lighter fabrics on the top you can see the quilt top is underneath.

Gettin' there...

It's so big and my sewing room is so full of junk that I can't even get a picture of the whole quilt!

The blue and white quilt has it's borders on now and is ready to be ironed. I finished it last night but I didn't feel very excited about it. It might be because I have a whole 'nother set of blue and white 9-patches to make a 2nd quilt with.

So do I put those away or do I trudge on and complete that one too? It has been a long time since I've worked on anything else but these little badly-sewn, miss-shapen, raggedy edges little homely blocks. 263 of them.

Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow? I think I'll just do laundry today.

All the rows up on my design wall.

Thirteen long rows to sew together.

A glimmer of light...

I'm starting to assemble it into rows.
Although it's almost a high when you create something of your own art, just the act of sewing is pleasant and soothing to the mind.
Now that a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel is appearing I'm getting excited about completing the top.

ANOTHER Blue and White Quilt

When I first threw myself into quilting back in the late 80's I LOVED blue quilts. This is one of those old projects from the early 90's that never got finished. Like other projects way back I had sewn badly, made mistakes, ripped, re-sewn, ripped, re-sewn...etc.

It was a class I took called "Nine Patch Variation" by Linda Dixon in Idaho. The class was set up so that you came with a whole ton of your strips of 5 fabrics, and then everyone in the class exchanged equal amounts of strips so that everyone went home with a wide variety of blues.

It's no fun when you get to the point that you don't enjoy it anymore. This is one of those UFO projects that I thought I would give to the Textile Center Garage Sale, but I didn't want to let it go. What was I thinking? It's 2 different sizes of 9 patches, 3" and 2-1/4" with rectangles in between that set them all together. I cut everything terribly, sewed the 9 patches awfully, and then at some point in time attempted to sew some of it together, with puckers, no points matching, etc.

Then at some other point in time I ripped that section out and was left with hundreds of wrinkly miss-shapen 9 patches; the edges are getting raggy, and the white rectangles aren't so rectangle anymore. I put it all away for another day.

Now it's 'another day'. I can't stand to just try to sew it together without straightening out the blocks, 9 patches and white rectangles. I'm wayyyy to anal to let that go. Removing all the threads from ripping, ironing them straighter, and heavily starching them so they don't go askew again. It's taking time.

Then the other problem is I have enough 9 patches to do about any size, including 2 double bed size coverlets...but I don't have enough of the white. Twenty year old white fabric isn't really white anymore, and it's going to be obvious if I add another white. I could do 2 double bed size, use the white on one, and use a new white on the other. Or I could just have 2 different whites in one huge quilt. I've separated the blocks to do 2 quilts but I'm not at the point of no return if I should change my mind.

I sewed a small stack to their white rectangles just to see how it's gonna go. I'll be ironing for days...