Starting on a dream

     I am really fond of these plaid flying geese units. I want to make some more, a little smaller, and use some of the ideas people gave me. I sewed up the ones I had cut a while back, and made this top. I am usually a multiple border kind of girl, but I think I'm leaving this one as is.

     I also finished step 2 of the Stashbuster mystery. Well, at least I think I'm finished step 2. The way I'm understanding the directions, the numbers aren't adding up right, so I made extras. This is only the second mystery quilt I've ever attempted, so I'm sure it's just me. I figure when the next step comes out I'll see if I did it right or not! If not, I have lots of 2 1/2 inch strips pre-cut and I thought of a good pattern to do with what I have done so far if I'm way off.

    The block above is the first block I've completed for Perkiomen Daydream. I decided to grab some 1 1/2 inch strips and get started on that while I was sewing 2 1/2 inch strips for the mystery quilt. This is going to be a VERY long term project. The finished quilt has 10,000 pieces, and the above square is only 25 of those. I only have 399 more of these blocks to go! Until I get a couple more projects done, I just don't have enough room to cut much, so this was a quick thing to use as leaders and enders until I do a lot more cutting. When I finally get that quilt done, I'm going to pay to have it quilted. It will be too big to fit on my frame, and there is no way I'm going to fight with a quilt that large on my DSM.

     I played with my quilting machine today, and got a "real" quilt loaded onto it. The plan is to quilt that tomorrow. In the last couple of days, I've actually done quite a bit with the quilting machine. I figured out how to use the Pattern Perfect Templates, and fasten those to the table and such. I printed out a couple of pantographs with the QuiltCAD program. I'm still trying to figure out that program. The quilting looks better with the templates, but I have more fun when I follow the pantograph. I am going for the pantograph tomorrow. 

    I am hoping that someday I will know how to do all these things well enough that it doesn't seem like so much WORK. Right now, I'm having to learn so much at once, that I'm overwhelmed, and that is not fun. Just loading the quilt today was a challenge. I've been quilting on plain muslin, so it didn't matter which side was up. I had to figure out which way to pin the fabric on the leaders to have the correct sides in the right place. It didn't take me that long to do it, once I figured out which way it went. Why do they use solid fabrics in the instructional video? That didn't help me at all. The quilt I loaded is just baby sized, so hopefully, all will go well, and I can bind it tomorrow night. Wouldn't that be great? If I can get a quilt quilted and bound in a day, I will really start to like this frame quilting thing.