What a Difference a Week Makes

Last week I had pretty good idea what I wanted to do for the next couple of months quilting-wise, and this week, well, things have changed.

DD#2 is needing to have surgery, and we finally got her surgery date. It's July 30th. We were supposed to be leaving to go to South Africa and see DD#1 and family on August 3rd. I am not at all comfortable with leaving the country so soon after DD#2's surgery, so our trip is cancelled. Rescheduling right now is not really an option, we were trying to go with DS the Elder, and he has college to schedule around.

DD#2 will be recovering here with us, and I decided she needs something cheery on the bed. I have been meaning to make a quilt for the guest bed for quite a while, and just never got around to it. Well, I took out all the fat quarters I bought in Hawaii last year, and I decided to try to get a quilt made out of them before the surgery date. I needed to choose a simple pattern with fairly large pieces, so the large scale prints wouldn't be completely lost. I am hoping to get the quilt top done in a week, then get it mailed off to my LAQ. I'm not comfortable quilting large queens myself yet.

I have been trying to be good when purchasing fabric for a particular quilt that I know I won't routinely make. I want to make a 30's quilt, and I bought some 6 inch squares and one layer cake. I would imagine that will be enough to make a 30's quilt, and I think one will probably be all I ever make of that. I bought about 25 fat quarters of Hawaiian fabric, and the pattern I chose needed 30. I dug out some men's Hawaiian shirts for the extra fabric I needed, so that was fine, but then I remembered borders and backing! I went online and bought fabric for the border and the backing from one of the fabric shops I went to in Hawaii. Their prices are very reasonable, and I only bought what I needed, so they were allowable on no-buy. I guess I might have the same problem with the 30's quilt since I have no yardage of that either.


Here is one block of the Hawaiian quilt. It is a 16" block. I opted for a stained glass type effect to help all the fabrics play together nicely.

On other projects, I have all the blocks done for DSIL's computer quilt, and the rows sewn together, but not to each other. No pics of that until he gets it, which will be a while now that I'm having to mail everything. A package usually takes six weeks to get to them, and that quilt is not even done yet. My quilting spree is going to have to wait for the Hawaiian quilt top to be finished.

I am packing up the stuff I was bringing to South Africa, and I'll be mailing it instead. I got DD#1's Buckeye Beauty back from the LAQ along with Carolina Christmas. I'll try to get pics taken in the next couple of days, so I can post some COMPLETED quilts! Yahoo!