Getting Somewhere

Today was my first chance to sew this week, but it was a good sewing time. The twins other grandmother had picked them up right after naptime, and didn't bring them home until bedtime, so I tried to make the most of it as long as I had any energy at all. During naptime, I arranged the blocks for the twins quilts the way I wanted them, and piled them up in numbered rows so I can start assembly on those. Once the twins left, I still had to finish the layout on the second quilt, but when that was done, I brought all of it downstairs ready to be put back into the sewing queue.

 I worked on the blocks for the comfort quilt, and now all the blocks are done. This weekend I will have to figure out the layout for that, and then when I am back to piecing I can assemble the twins quilts and this one.

I started assembling Mr. L's quilt while I was working on the piano key border for the comfort quilt. Since the comfort quilt and his quilt have the same sized blue squares, they have a lot of the same fabrics in them. Do you remember I wasn't counting nine patches for the twins quilts as I made them, I just tried to make a few too many? Well, I have enough extra nine patches of each colorway to make baby I Spy quilts. I have a whole drawer full of extra I Spy blocks, so I will just alternate them with the extra nine patches and get two quick donation quilts.

This photo didn't come out very good, but it still gets my point across. These are the strips for DD#2's quilt. Originally this container was overflowing with white strips, and I had the colored strips in a separate container. They all fit in the same container now, so I have been making good progress on getting strip sets sewn. I haven't counted the strips either, I already have a donation quilt started in these colors from the extra pieces from the last quilt I made from this pattern. Any extras will just get added to that quilt. I am faking this quilt, I haven't really planned it out, and I was thinking about that today. The blocks end up about 7", so if I set it 15x15 blocks to make a 105" square quilt, I need 225 blocks. It takes one white strip and one colored strip to make one block. I think it would take on a really modern look if I don't add a border, but then all my outside edges will be bias, I wonder if that would be hard to bind?

After piecing batting for the baby quilt, I realized I did not want to piece batting for the comfort quilt. Since people will be signing it, I didn't want seams in the batting to mess anyone up. I didn't have any white batting large enough for the comfort quilt, and a lot of it is white. Then I started thinking about DD#2's quilt, and it will be half white, so it should have white batting too. DH said I should just buy another roll of polyester batting, but until my roll of Warm and Natural is almost gone, I don't have room to store it. I checked Joann's website to see what my options were, and I saw that they had prepacked batting on sale for half price, but Saturday when I was looking was the last day of the sale. I knew I didn't have a chance of making it to the store that day, but they also had a $2.95 flat shipping deal, so I took advantage of that. I ordered four king size polyester battings, and one king sized Warm and White batting for DD#2's quilt. I got my batting today, and I did find room for it all. Of course it's on top of cabinets piled to the ceiling, but it is out of my way, and that is what counts for now. I think that amount of batting will hold me over for a while. I have quilts that need to be quilted, but I doubt I'll have a major quilting spree until next summer, so I will just be quilting quilts here and there as I have time for now.

Tomorrow DD#3, aka the twin's mom, doesn't have school, so I should have time to start quilting that baby quilt. I'm doubting I can finish it tomorrow, but Saturday should be an OK sewing day as well. I'm hoping to get that quilt finished this weekend, and maybe get the comfort quilt finished next weekend, if I can get the top done during short sewing sessions next week. I'm hoping it works that way anyway. Time will tell, but I am getting closer!