Busy Bee

Yesterday and today I worked on blocks. I like mixing short projects between long ones. Last week I spent my time working on the Rubber Ducky baby quilt. Now that it's finished, I was looking forward to doing some little projects that could be finished quickly.

Our hostess for the We Bee With It bee I'm in this year asked for these scrappy wonky star blocks. She wanted one in pink:

And one in blues and greens:

They're pretty simple to make, and you could make them any size you want. In this case, all the squares are 3.5 inches, just sewn into a 16-patch.

With those finished, I'm ready to take on a larger project: quilting the Psycatdelic quilt.

At 65 x 81 inches, this is the largest quilt I've ever attempted to quilt myself. If Eliza hadn't come to live with us, I would be sending it out to a long arm quilter. 

When I finished it up a few months ago, I realized that I was going to run short of that Laurel Burch border fabric, and I wanted to use it for the back as well. I measured, and figured, and calculated, and came up with a way of cutting it that preserved almost the precise amount I needed to use it for both borders and back. Then, in my usual style, I took the back seam just a little deeper than I might have, which meant that I barely had enough space on the back to stretch all the way across.

When I thread basted it a few months ago, I had about two inches to spare on the left side, but I was right at the selvage edge on the right.

Literally.

Okay. So I think this is going to be fine, and I can always shave a little off the edges of the borders and make them narrower if I need to. But I decided I could start quilting on this right border and quilt from the middle to the top and then from the middle to the bottom. Then I'll work from right to left across the quilt and it should work out. We shall see. I really hope I don't end up hating myself.

My plan is to quilt around the shapes of some of the cats to help poof them out a little in the borders. I have a variegated thread I'll use there and in my bobbin, so the quilting really won't show much on the back. When I get to the blocks, I have plans for each one of them, and I'll use matching threads there.

It feels like a quilting journey of 1,000 miles to me right now--sort of the quilting equivalent of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. Please come looking for me if I don't call home at regular intervals. Hm. I wonder if I should attach a homing beacon of some kind to myself.

It's a beautiful day here today, and so I have plans to get out for a walk. The rain is expected to return by Wednesday. Better walk while the walking is good.