Sew Like the Wind!

DH just had six days off in row, and that rarely happens. Even rarer is me having time to sew when he's home a lot. BUT, DH just started a new project, which requires him to spend lots of time on his computer, at HOME! So instead of us going out all the time, we mostly stayed home, and I sewed while he worked on his new project. As long as I made dinner he was happy.

I've gotten a LOT done in the last week! The weighted blankets I was working on? I now have four tops completed. The herringbone quilt I was working on? Top done and it's basted! I also have three other quilts basted, with another laid out to baste tomorrow, and four more I hope to baste over the weekend. I've been piecing backings, adding borders to a couple quilts, finished more Flying Geese units for a UFO, and basically working on a dozen different things but making progress on all of them!

This is my basting setup. I have two 8 ft folding tables I set up side by side in the living room after moving most of the furniture. The 8 ft tables really fill up the living room, but even a king sized quilt doesn't hang off the end much. The two tables together are 5 ft wide, so I still need to move a big quilt around, but not too much. Today was the second day of my basting spree, and here are my newly basted quilts ready for quilting.

Four quilts basted so far, but I'm hoping I'll have nine basted by Sunday night when I have DH take the tables down. 

Here are my weighted blanket tops that are ready to match with backings. I plan to make three more tops before I start working on finishing any of these. 

This is one of the quilts I added a border to (it's folded in fourths for the photo). I had made the center a while back, and when the center was done, it no longer matched the border fabric I had chosen the colors from. I was very discouraged, But one day when cutting fabric, this Southwestern print caught my eye. This is one of the main reasons I like my stash on shelves with glass doors. I never would have thought to dig out a Southwestern fabric to put with a Celtic knot design, but the colors caught my eye and I realized this fabric might just redeem this project. I am much happier with this quilt now, and I found a terrific variegated thread to quilt it with, so I'm excited about this project now. This quilt top resulted in a bunch of bonus HSTs, from which I made another quilt top.

After seeing how well I liked the fabrics with that Southwestern print, I decided to audition that as a border with the bonus quilt too. Yup! I like it! The Southwestern print made the color choices make sense, even though it was a completely different fabric I chose the colors from. I only have about 25" of that Southwestern print left after cutting borders for both quilts, but that's OK. I'm really happy with how it ended up being used. 

Even if I make my goal of basting nine quilts in five days, I'm really happy I'm only using one wide quilt backing. I'm piecing backings for everything else, and I'm really seeing yardage fly off the shelves. 

I'm using two king sized packaged battings, and demolishing a partial roll of batting I had. I think to baste the last couple of quilts I'm either going to have to make some Frankenbatts, or open another roll of batting. Likely I will just open another roll of batting. I don't normally baste quite so many quilts in one spree, and to save time, I'll likely make the Frankenbatts another time. I don't mind piecing batting at all, and often when I know I'm going to have a basting spree I make a bunch of Frankenbatts ahead of time and match them to quilts. This time I didn't do that, but batting scraps aren't going to go bad, they just take up space. I'll see if I can get the batting scraps dealt with before my next basting spree.