Blue Skies – One Step Closer

If you’ve been reading the blog this week you know that Kelli is working hard to have a quilt finished by Sunday.

Thursday she was here hoping to get the quilt one more step further along.  The story should be simple…but of course it’s not.  When Kelli cut the quilt out, she accidentally cut all the half square triangles at 2″ instead of 2 1/2″.  That makes for a lot smaller block….That means she had to add more blocks.

The quilt is for a college student and with the assumption that she’ll likely have a twin sized bed, the quilt should probably be rectangle rather than square….so more blocks.  The more blocks made it difficult making the the outside border of half square triangles not quite matching up like the original quilt….Let’s just say a seam ripper was heavily used on this quilt.

So she came early in the day hoping I could help her figure out the borders and she’d sew them on while I was doing childcare….well childcare was a little crazy.  I have new kids this week who haven’t been on a walk yet.  The first time out I like a helper with me just to make sure the rules are reinforced and everyone stays safe.  On the walk we stopped and did the post office and bank business…then the gals at the bank reminded me I needed to come back and do another set of paperwork.  So being Kelli was there to watch the kids, I ran back to the bank and did that.

Finally at 4:30 we were down to two kids…we thought we could lay the quilt out and at least get the border fabrics picked.

It really wasn’t the best idea….

Two dogs…with two kids…and a quilt flimsy….

Well let us just say, the process of picking borders was interesting.

Ruby wanted to sit and pose for the picture.

Kelli intended on using the light blue for a border and the center blue for the back.  I nixed that.

I said the dark yellow and the then the middle dark blue as the border…and that’s what she did.

She cut and I sewed the strips together and then she sewed the borders on while I got the backing ironed and loaded onto the frame.  Then I picked and loaded thread.

It took two hours on the frame.  It was power sewing.  Kelli clipped thread, filled bobbins and helped advance the quilt.  Finally at 10:15 that night we took it off the frame.

All that’s left is the binding…yahoo!

I sent the quilt home with Kelli and have instructed her that we MUST have some pictures of the finished quilt!!  It turned out awesome!

Tonight after a day of childcare I’ll be back up at the machine.  I have a wedding tomorrow and my quilt isn’t finished either!  At least my top is finished and the backing is ironed….

Oh procrastination….