Happy Birthday, Howard!

Today is my husband's birthday. I would like to say we had a nice time celebrating his birthday, but alas, we didn't. We tried to go out to breakfast, but one of the tires on the van was flat. He had to work today, so we didn't have time to change it. He won't be home until sometime after midnight, so in reality, I saw him very little on his birthday. We are going to have a family dinner, on Valentine's Day, to celebrate his birthday. I did make him breakfast, so he didn't go to work hungry in case you were wondering. He is a wonderful man, and I'm hoping to make up for his not-so-great birthday later on.

I did get a lot of sewing done today. I finished all of the blocks for the ugly quilt, but I didn't take a picture of those.

Here are Chunks 21, 22, and 23. Only two more to go! Yeah! I know this quilt is only squares, so it is not difficult to sew together, but I don't think I've made one that is harder to keep straight. Knock one square out of place, and you're lost. The pattern is so dependent on placement, and there isn't an easy way to keep things straight.

I lay out each chunk on my cutting table, double check the pattern to make sure it's correct, then make stacks of each row. I move three rows at a time to my sewing table, and sew those three rows. At the end of each set of three I use a leader/ender so I can keep my rows in order. I have pins in each row to help me keep it straight, but it gets too confusing for me to do more than three rows at once. I'm not sure if that makes sense to anyone but me, but trust me, I've done plenty of ripping on this quilt when I get in too big of a hurry.

I haven't figured out where each chunk goes, and I've been debating what to do if I have two of the same fabrics next to each other. I am so anxious to get this top together, that unless it's incredibly obvious, I may just leave it. A few of the fabrics are more noticeable than the others, and if it's one of those, I will probably have to fix it. I'm hoping for the best, and that I don't have too many changes to make when I lay it out.

The center of the Shamrock quilt is done. It needs borders, but I won't mess with that until the Celtic quilt is mailed off to be quilted.