June 30

More quilt lines and a very worried Monster as a major storm moved through....  Mary

June 29

Just straight line quilting, nothing fancy....  Mary

June 28

Monster heavily supervised the pin basting with his eyes closed on the couch.  Very helpful approach.... Mary

June 27

Just love the fact that the Pinmoor is patented.  Good for them.  And I find them amusing in the same way I find polka-dots amusing.  Hopefully they will be finger and wrist savers when I start pin basting tomorrow....  Mary

June 26

Happy Birthday to Annie!  We took her out for Chinese dumplings after work....  Mary

June 25

Monster helps with the backing for the quilt....  Mary

June 24

This is the backing for the quilt ironed out.  Following the old adage of measure twice (even thrice!) and cut once....  Mary

June 23

Found a video that shows an easy way to baste a quilt, stitch basting, pin basting, whatever way you choose.  The woman came up with it as a way for her mother to be able to baste while sitting in a chair at a table rather than crawling around on the floor.

I went to Menards after work and got a 12 foot white coated board that the nice young man in the yard cut into two 6 foot lengths for me.  We shall see if this way is as easy as she makes it look.  Heaven knows, I am very much in favor of not crawling around on the floor unnecessarily....  Mary

June 22

This quilt top really speaks to having a design wall on which to hang the quilt blocks and move them about.  My first on-paper design for the quilt is not nearly as interesting as the final, moved and rearranged quilt top....  Mary

June 21

The quilt top is all together.  On the whole it looks pretty good.  Not all the corners are perfect, but I believe in the old quilting rule:  Hang the quilt on a fence.  If you can't see any problems while riding by on a speeding horse, then it's perfect....  Mary

June 20

Last row of blocks are together.  Tomorrow just two long seams and the quilt top will be fully assembled....  Mary

June 19

Just got these twin pointed quick stitch needles in the mail.  Some folks use these for hand quilting.  Since I have never hand quilted before, I decided these might be interesting.  Hand quilting is a bit intimidating: super fine needlework, twelve stitches to the inch, etc.

Then I found this great quote from Tim Latimer in American Quilter magazine, accompanying his award winning Tree of Life quilt:  "The 'right' way becomes irritating and a barrier.  Ignore the rules and just do it!"  Sounds like good advice to me....  Mary

June 18

Another row tonight....  Mary

June 17

My niece, Molly, is expecting her first child in October.  These are some of the fabrics I am going to use in her baby quilt....  Mary

June 16

My friend JK was right about starting from the opposite corner once I reached the center row.  It would be very unwieldy to keep adding the rows onto the first half.  This way the second half can be assembled and then the two large pieces sewn together....  Mary

June 15

Happy Fathers' Day to my honey, Rick....  Mary

June 14

Tomorrow will be the center row of the quilt....  Mary

June 13

Another row, and now off to bed....  Mary

June 12

Same old, same old.  One more row....  Mary

June 11

Another strip, and it shows just how wonky the original blocks were hung....  Mary

June 10

And another strip....  Mary

June 9

Another row sewn together....  Mary

June 8

First corner sewn together....  Mary

June 7

The blocks are all hung, if a little wonkily....  Mary

June 6

Changed the center blocks....  Mary

June 5

Monster is truly exhausted from moving lots and lots a blocks around tonight....  Mary

June 4

More block moving....  Mary

June 3

Moving blocks around some more....  Mary

June 2

Taking a picture of the quilt makes the image static and still in a way that it is not when looking at the quilt with the naked eye.  It is much easier to see which blocks need to move to balance out the colors and patterns....  Mary

June 1

All the blocks are laid out on the design wall, now to start moving them around....  Mary