Quilting Through Hump Day

Bet you've been wondering how that quilt of mine is coming?  You'd think I'd be done by now, wouldn't you?  Yeah. . .well. . . guess what?  I'm not.  Sigh. . . . I was all gung-ho, then life got in the way, then my attentions were diverted, and then I just wasn't in the mood.  ACK!  I'm motivated now, though.  No worries!

I'm determined to stay on task and finish it before I move on to my next project. . . well. . . I'll have to take a wee-break to make some Easter cards.  And that's actually at the top of my 'to-do' list - goal is to have those mailed on Monday.  I've got my papers, punches, glitters, glue, and . . . and. . . and. . . .all ready to go.  Just got to get my thoughts together, finalize my ideas, and make them.  I am excited!

But back to that quilt.  I do have all 17 of the pieced blocks put together and have just started attaching them to the whole blocks.  I have two rows done and I think I'll go ahead and do each row before attaching all of the rows.  I also went ahead, once done with the small piecework, and attached my larger sewing machine arm/table to give more level work space.  This helps to keep the weight of the fabric at the same level as the needle and prevents the two layers from pulling apart while sewing.  I prefer to not use pins to keep the fabric lined up, if at all possible, and this table most certainly helps with that! 

Even though I was very careful when cutting out my pieces - there still was a lot of trimming of the squares.  If you remember (and can hopefully see in the photos), two of the checked outter strips are the same length as the inner block, and the opposite two strips are the length of the whole pieced block.  I had opted to do all of the inner blocks, then attach the shorter strips.  Before I attached those shorter strips, I trimmed up and squared off the smaller blocks.  Once the short strips were attached, I trimmed those edges even with the inner block edges.  Then I attached the longer strips. . . and (yup.  you guessed it) trimmed the blocks once again.

Before attaching the pieced blocks with the whole patterned blocks, I had to trim the two different kinds of blocks to be the same size.  This meant about 1/4" off of two edges of the 'whole' block of the patterned fabric. 

None of this trimming was difficult, but was incredibly tedious and time consuming.  Where were you??  I sure could have used the help!  Thank goodness for my Olfa cutting mat, roller, and ruler.  Those rollers make such short work of cutting out multiple pieces and trimming.  I can't imagine how worn out my hand would be if I had to use scissors. . . and how crooked some of the cuts would be, eh?  Regardless, the cutting is currently at a pause and it's time to sew-sew-sew.

Oh!  I did finally settle on a brown fabric for the quilt's border.  It's not identical to the brown in the pieced quilt square, but does add some dimension to the overall design as it's kind of a suede-like (but very light weight) fabric.  I think it'll really pull it all together and kind of frame the quilt top.

At this point, I'm very anxious to get the quilt top done, figure out how I'm going to bind it - then proceed with the actual quilting process of attaching the top with the back of the quilt.  Whew!  At the minute, I need to stay focused on just getting all of those squares together. . . .  It won't be long now and I'll be snuggled under my new quilt.  Or maybe I should say - it won't be soon enough!

Have an all sewed-up kind of day ~

Robin Z