Saturday, April 6, 2013

Rally Quilt Is a Top


This isn't the best photo, but it was windy when we were trying to take pictures. I finally got the rally quilt into a top, and I have three weeks to get it quilted and bound. It gets raffled off three weeks from today. I won't have time to sew everyday between now and then, so it will be some long sewing days when I can sew. Because of the time restraints, I will just meander on all of the quilt except for the appliqued border, which will be getting some details added in during the quilting. I pieced the backing for this quilt today too, so it is ready to pin-baste as soon as I have some time without two year old twins trying to help ;-)

I have been working on three inch nine patches as leaders/enders or just when I want to do a bunch of chain sewing to feel like I am getting something done. I have 330 of the white/black nine patches done now, but I need about 550 for the quilt I have planned. I am out of the squares I was using to make those nine patches, so the rest will be strip pieced, and I'm not going to do that right now. I will be making pink/white nine patches until I run out of pre-cut squares for that.

I am also working on putting borders on a couple of other quilts. I am planning a big quilting spree over the summer, so the more quilt tops and backings I can get ready before then, the better chance I have to get a lot done during the quilting spree. I have quilt blocks done for about five quilts or so, and two quilt centers waiting for borders. If I can get those all into quilt tops before college lets out the end of May, I will be a happy quilter. While college is out for summer, I won't have to babysit as often, and I will have a lot more quilting time. I already have a few quilt tops in queue for quilting, a couple of which are even pin-basted already!

It feels so nice to be back to sewing! I am simply a happier person when I get a chance to sew. I was getting pretty grumpy over the two months I couldn't even get into my sewing room. Quilting is my sanity saver, and when I can't do it, I just feel all frazzled.

It looks like I will be getting a little more space in my sewing room soon, maybe in May. DD#2 has had one wall of my sewing room covered in bookshelves (she is a seller on Amazon), and I think I will be able to move most, if not all of them, out to another room. I am excited about that, because that will make the difference on whether I have my Juki cabinet completely extended all of the time, or partially down most of the time. Right now I don't have enough room to keep the back flap up, and without those bookcases in my sewing room, I can have the back flap up all of the time. That will give me some storage space for my totes under the back flap, and makes it easier to always have a quilting project going as well as a piecing project. I am really excited about the additional space.

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