Back in the Sewing Saddle

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It was great to spend some time in the sewing room today. I was able to complete the ninth of twelve doors for the Doors of Ireland quilt. Here's the door I was working on:

When I had all the pieces fused down and marked, it looked like this.

It still needed top-stitching, and I thought I might stop there for the day. Then, I decided to stitch the door. As usually happens when I try to do just one little thing more, I ended up finishing off the whole thing and trimming it to size. 

Keep in mind that I'm only top-stitching the edges of the applique pieces and adding a few little accents. Much of the top-stitching and detail work will happen when I'm ready to quilt it since I plan to quilt in most of the detail once it's been sandwiched. Here are all the blocks I have so far:

As long as I've been working on these blocks, I've been considering how to set them once I have all twelve complete. Yesterday, I suddenly had a brainstorm, and I knew just what to do. I'll use the doors as the centerpieces of a traditional Double Irish Chain. Here's an example of what I'm talking about:

I used an online tool to figure out how to make this work. My blocks are trimmed to nine inches, and I had intended them to finish at 8 1/2 inches. To make the Double Irish Chain block work with my blocks, I'll need to put a green border around each one, bringing them to 11 inches. Then, they'll fill in the center of the largest white areas in the image above. I'll use two shades of green for the remainder of the Irish Chain setting. It will make this a rather large quilt at a minimum of 87.5 x 87.5 inches. I'll want to add at least a small border, and so it will probably end up more like 90 inches square.

A long time ago, I purchased three yards of this fabric:

My thought at the time was that I would be using this as the back. I can still do that, but it will need to be pieced somehow. I'll figure that out later. I might be able to incorporate this into the quilt front as well, but I haven't thought that far ahead.

When I work on the tenth block for this quilt, I'll be doing this door. I just love that "Cyclelogical" name. It was a shop we passed while touring Dublin. Like the "Mad Hatters Dingle" door, I didn't think the quilt would be complete without including this one. 

As I'm looking at this, I'm thinking I might try printing on fabric so that I can include those posters in the windows. It wouldn't be difficult to do. As for the graffiti...I think I'll leave that out.

Tomorrow I'm going to get on with quilting the "Never Underestimate" wall hanging.

If I can get it finished up in one day, I'll have completed all the projects on my December list, and I can move along with the new ones for January.

It's late in the day now and time to think about dinner. I'm thinking about it, and I'm thinking I might drag the Resident Engineer out for Thai food. After all the cooking I've done over the past week, it would be nice to have someone else make dinner for a change.