Halfway House

Yesterday I was able to finish the quilting and machine sew the binding on the Where Angels Walk quilt.

It ended up okay, although it is more loosely quilted than I'm accustomed to doing. I quilted a straight line grid by stitching on each side of the middle "bar" of each quilt block, and then again on each side of the sashings. You can get an idea what I'm talking about in the next image.

There are lots of fabrics in this quilt, but really one main floral, and I used that for the binding. Here's how it looks from the back:

The back was made from a 105-inch wide piece of fabric, and that was really slick. I've never used extra-wide fabric like that before, and I was thinking I would need to sew at least one seam for the back. But no. All I had to do was cut it to the correct width, and I was ready to sew.

This morning, I got a good start on the hand-sewing, and I'm now about halfway around the quilt. I love the neat and tidy look of a freshly sewn binding, and it improved the looks of this quilt significantly.

I have the label made, although I haven't printed it off yet. This quilt is a gift for our friends Greg and Jan, and I'm using the same image on the label that helped me choose the name for the quilt.

Our warm weather has returned, and so I need to do some watering this morning. Also, I have a few errands to run. I was set to make some zucchini relish today, but I might decide to wait until tomorrow. My jars aren't washed, and I like to wash them in the dishwasher so that I know they're really clean. And since I just washed the dishes, it doesn't seem prudent to run a whole load just to wash five jars, now does it?

Next on my sewing list is to quilt the Happy Campers quilt. I want to have it ready so that we can hang it in our fifth wheel before we take off on our trip to Minnesota in September.

It's a small quilt, and so it shouldn't take very long.

Also, I'm leaving for the 2014 Association of Pacific West Quilters Symposium on Thursday. And doesn't the word "symposium" make it sound all high falutin? Just now I Googled "symposium" to see what its technical definition is. This is what I found:

sym·po·si·um

simˈpōzēəm/

noun

1. a conference or meeting to discuss a particular subject.

   • a collection of essays or papers on a particular subject by a number of contributors.
   • a drinking party or convivial discussion, especially as held in ancient Greece after a banquet (and notable as the title of a work by Plato).

   
   

Okay, so I suppose they named it as "a conference or meeting to discuss a particular subject", but I kind of like the "drinking party" part of that definition. What do you think? So if you want to know what I'll be doing in addition to drinking, you can scroll down to the bottom of this post from back in April. I imagine the level of "imbibification" (I just now made up that word from the root, "imbibe") will have something to do with my success or failure in my classes. And just now, I wanted to check and see if I really made up that word, or if someone had already beaten me to it. Here's what I found upon the Google. From the Urban Dictionary:

imbibification 

A fancy name for the process of getting righteously (and discretely)plastered. Frequently used by those with inflated perceptions of themselves.

Did you see them pull ...(name of mindless celebrity, pompous senator, or sanctimonius pundit HERE) out of the Tidal Basin. He and his "friend" were definitely in an advanced state of imbibification.

Okay then.

This morning I was looking at the supply list. For one of my classes, I'm supposed to bring one yard of "Wonder-Under or your favorite fusible web" although it specifically says NOT to bring Heat-n-Bond. And since Heat-n-Bond is my favorite fusible web, I'm wondering what the problem is. It's always worked great for me, and so I've never tried anything else. I guess this will be my golden opportunity to try Wonder Under. Maybe the first thing I'll learn is that Heat-n-Bond is a terrible product and I'll be wishing I hadn't bought a 75-yard roll of it recently. And thank goodness for Amazon Prime. I ordered some Wonder Under this morning, and I'll have it by Wednesday. 

Have I said recently how much I love the internet?

So that's my day, and my week for that matter. I'll be writing some posts ahead that you'll see while I'm gone, although I'm not ruling out blogging while I'm gone. I'm staying in the dorms at the University of Puget Sound where this whole shindig is taking place. (Now that I know it's a drinking party, I figure it's been unmasked for the "shindig" it really is. And, hey! It's a college campus, for Pete's sake, in Washington, where marijuana is legal now! Why wouldn't it be a shindig?) 

But now I'm getting ahead of myself because I have more blog posts to write before I go. I feel them brewing inside of me as these particular words are laid down. Anyway...all of that to say that the July NewFO Linky Party and Giveaway goes live on Thursday. Are you ready?