Mission Impossible: COMPLETED, With Five Days to Spare!

Ta-DONE: Mission Impossible, 68 x 90

Hello, Lovelies!  Happy Monday and Happy June to all of you!  I am happy to report that I DID complete the quilting on Lars's graduation quilt, Mission Impossible, in time for the church staff meeting last Tuesday!

Off the Frame!  Mission Impossible Quilting Completed, Ready to Trim

Memorial Day was my birthday, and I "celebrated" by spending 7 1/2 hours at the longarm machine in order to finish all of the SID (Stitch in the Ditch) around the flying geese so I could take the quilt off the frame before I went to bed.  

I had considered all sorts of options for jazzing up the flying geese triangles with additional quilting, but ultimately the calendar and looming deadline won out.  With all of the ruler work quilting that I did in the purple background plus just stitching in the ditches of the flying geese, the total quilting time for Mission Impossible clocked in at just over 45 hours -- plus the 8 or 9 hours that I spent marking the background design before loading the quilt on the frame.  Realistically, there just was not time to attempt embellishing the flying geese with additional quilting.

Boring But Time-Consuming Stitch In the Ditch Quilting

I used Superior's Monopoly invisible monofilament thread in Smoke for the SID (with a gray MagnaGlide prewound in the bobbin), and it was a wise choice.  Although the clear monofilament thread stood out and looked super shiny and obvious against my fabrics, the Smoke thread just melted into each fabric as if I'd changed threads to match each and every fabric.  SID is much more challenging on a longarm machine than it is on a domestic machine, in my experience, and I can assure you that I had plenty of wobbles and oopses along the way.  With the monofilament thread, those growing pains or whatever you want to call them really are invisible enough that I did not have to stop and rip out ANY of my SID quilting.  Also, if you look carefully in the photo above, you can see that my stitch regulator is performing erratically, making the 12-15 SPI (stitches per inch) that I've set it to in some directions and then making TINY little stitches when I move the machine in a different direction.  That's an issue I need to trouble-shoot with the awesome folks at APQS Tech Support, but I didn't want to go off on that tangent until I got Lars's quilt finished and off my frame.  That discrepancy in stitch length would have been really obvious if I'd attempted additional decorative quilting in a contrasting thread color.

So I picked the quilt up from church after the Tuesday morning staff meeting concluded and brought it home to work on the label and the binding.

Machine Embroidered Quilt Label for Mission Impossible

The label took me a day and a half; it's not "instantaneous" just because it's machine embroidered.  I designed the label in my Bernina v8 Designer Plus embroidery software on my iMac computer, which lets me lay out the lettering and position the text exactly the way I want it and preview it in an endless variety of fonts...  I went through a lot of options before settling on the two fonts you see in the photo above.  Then I spend time deciding which fabric and thread colors to use for the label, which stabilizers, sew out a sample, and then go back to my software to make adjustments before sewing out the design "for real."  To save myself some of that time and trouble for next time, here are the most common things that usually need to get tweaked after the first sample is stitched:

Rebecca's Best Practices for Machine Embroidered Quilt Labels:

• Increase the spacing between the letters.  When the fonts are shrunk down to the size of a quilt label, the letters are almost always too close together and difficult to read.
• Set the fabric type to "Lightweight Woven" in the design settings.  This lets the software automatically adjust pull compensation for my lightweight quilting cotton fabric.
• At the sewing machine, lower the upper thread tension to 1.5.  Otherwise the bobbin thread gets pulled to the top side with these skinny little satin stitched letters
• Reduce the embroidery speed at the machine 
• Use a water-soluble topping, one layer of tearaway in the hoop (I'm currently loving Floriani Stitch 'N' Wash for quilt labels because a lot of what doesn't tear away will soften and dissolve in the wash), and another layer of tearaway floated beneath the hoop
• Engage the hoop basting feature in my Bernina machine to secure all layers of fabric and stabilizers around the perimeter of the hoop before stitching out the design

Label is On, and Now For the Binding!

I put the final hand stitches in the binding around midnight on the evening of June 1st.  I'm counting that as "finished by the end of May" for last month's One Monthly Goal.  However, against my better judgement, I decided to run the finished quilt through the wash before going to bed so it would be REALLY finished...  

Now, there was never any question about whether this quilt would ever get washed.  It's a bed quilt for an eighteen-year-old boy's college dorm, for Pete's sake.  And I went through 3 or 4 cans of spray starch throughout its construction and made liberal use of Roxanne's Glue Baste-It washable glue to streamline the curved piecing, AND I marked the entire quilting design onto the quilt top with 3 or 4 different kinds of marking pen...  This quilt was always intended to be washable, and it would not have been 100% "finished" until I washed out all of the starch, glue, and pen marks.  

I tested each and every one of the Kona Solid fabrics used in the quilt top to ensure their dyes wouldn't bleed before I started the quilt, and I tested a swatch of the Spoonflower backing fabric as well.  Every one of those fabrics passed with flying colors.  I didn't notice anything when I pulled the wet quilt out of the washer at 1 AM and transferred it to the dryer.  But in the light of morning, I could see that my yellows were all dingy and there were dark blue streaks on some of them.   I couldn't even bring myself to take a picture of it; it was just too disheartening.  I had to just deal with it, RIGHT AWAY.

SO...  I looked up Vicki Welsh's Save My Bleeding Quilt tutorial, since her instructions saved me when I had bleeding red dye on my Jingle quilt blocks.  With Vicki's method, you don't need any expensive, difficult to obtain or toxic chemicals; just a big bathtub full of water and ordinary Dawn dishwashing liquid.

This Is What the Water Looked Like After Soaking My Quilt for Four Hours

Check out how much additional loose dye was released from this quilt AFTER that first run through the washing machine.  I emptied the tub and filled it with hot, soapy dishwater twice more after this photo was taken, until I could scoop out a glass of the water and confirm that it was clear.  Then the quilt went through several rinse cycles in my laundry machine to remove the Dawn detergent and I dried it again.

Fabrics Faded After Loose Dye Removed

The results?  Well, I'm pretty sure the culprit was the Spoonflower custom printed fabric that I used for the backing, which was printed with black and blue water based inks onto white Kona solid cotton base fabric.  Now that all of the loose dye is gone, the backing is considerably faded, but the fabrics in the quilt top itself have lost some of their vibrancy as well.  I love having the Bible verse printed all over the backing fabric so it's worth it to me in the end, but if I had this to do over again I would have soaked the backing fabric in my tub with the Dawn dish water until all of the extra dye was used BEFORE I loaded it onto my frame and quilted it to my quilt top.  I don't mind the fading of the backing fabric at all -- in fact, removing the excess dye made the backing softer and gave it kind of an appealing denim/chambray vibe.  The folks at Spoonflower did advise me in their care instructions to prewash their fabric before using it in a project, in their defense.  I thought that, if the swatch I dunked in boiling water didn't bleed, I'd be fine -- but perhaps their inks aren't colorfast only start bleeding once a mild laundry detergent is added to the mix?  Could a dye fixative like Synthrapol have helped, if I used it on the Spoonflower fabric before I put that fabric in my quilt?  Who knows -- these are questions for another day.  Because on THIS day, I'm just glad that my quilt is done a whole FIVE DAYS before the Quillow Service at church.  I even get to bring it to Show and Tell at my quilt guild on Wednesday night, to prove that I really am a quilter and not just a government spy infiltrating their meetings...  ;-)

Mission Impossible, 68" x 90"

So this quilt top was 72" x 96" before quilting, and after longarm quilting, machine washing, multiple hot water soaks, and machine washing again, the finished quilt ended up measuring approximately 68" x 90".  That was 6% shrinkage in the width and 7% shrinkage in length, using all unwashed 100% cotton fabrics and Hobbs 80/20 black batting.  Still generously sized to fit one of those 39" x 80" Extra-Long Twin dormitory mattresses, with a 16" drop on all three sides of the bed.

The Sexy Lawn Shot

Fading or no fading, I'm still pretty pleased with how this quilt turned out.  It looks just like my EQ8 design, it's going to fit the college dorm bed, it's done in time for this Sunday's Quillow Service, and it's a soft, snuggly quilt that will keep my son warm in his dorm room this Fall!  I learned a lot making this quilt, got lots of practice with the ruler work quilting, and am happy to report that those needle holes on the backing fabric closed up nicely, the quilt ended up perfectly straight and square, the lettering on the backing fabric was still straight after quilting, and there are NO pleats or tucks in the backing fabric.  Those are enough victories for me to consider this a win.

The Rear View

PSST!!  I'd Love to Quilt for YOU!

By the way, if you or any of your quilty friends has a quilt top or two that needs quilting, I'd be delighted to quilt for you!  My turnaround for edge-to-edge quilting is currently running about 2 weeks, and you can click here to find out how to book your quilt with me.

I'm linking up today's post with:

MONDAY

·      Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts http://smallquiltsanddollquilts.blogspot.com 

·      Main Crush Monday at Cooking Up Quilts http://www.cookingupquilts.com/

·      Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt http://lovelaughquilt.blogspot.com/

TUESDAY

·      Colour and Inspiration Tuesday at http://www.cleverchameleon.com.au

WEDNESDAY

·      Midweek Makers at www.quiltfabrication.com/

·      WOW WIP on Wednesday at www.estheraliu.blogspot.com

THURSDAY

·      Needle and Thread Thursday at http://www.myquiltinfatuation.blogspot.com/  

FRIDAY

·      Whoop Whoop Fridays at www.confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com

·      Finished Or Not Friday at http://busyhandsquilts.blogspot.com/

·      TGIFF Thank Goodness It’s Finished Friday, rotates, hosted this week by Lynette at http://whatahootquilts.blogspot.com  

Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock... Deadline for Mission Impossible is 5 Days Away. Or 7 Days. Or 2 Weeks.

Center Row of Circles Finished Yesterday

Good morning and happy Tuesday!  This needs to be short and sweet so I can get back to this graduation quilt that's under my needle.  This quilt is for a blessing ceremony at church and the official deadline for turning in the graduates' Bibles and quilts to the church office is this Sunday, May 26th.  However, I found out that the pastors and staff won't be passing around the Bibles and praying over the quilts until their staff meeting on Tuesday morning, May 28th.  And I further discovered that, in years past, there has been more than one not-quite-finished quilt in the pile on the conference table, with pins still in them, that are picked up after the staff meeting so they can be completed in time for the Quillow Sunday service, which is June 9th.  

Everything Hanging Off the Front of the Frame is Neither Basted nor Quilted Yet

Now, if I was quilting this on a domestic machine or on one of the sit-down machines like the Bernina Q20 or the HandiQuilter Sweet Sixteen, it would be basted with safety pins and I could take it to church mid-quilting and bring it back home to pick up right where I left off with quilting it.  However, since I'm longarm quilting it, the unquilted portion is NOT basted and it's attached to the rollers of the quilting frame.  Had I attached my zipper leaders to my canvases, I could have zipped off the quilt and zip it back on again exactly as it was before, but with pinning, I'm not comfortable taking the quilt off the frame until it's completely quilted.  So that means I have until Tuesday, a week from today, to finish quilting Mission Impossible, and then after the church staff meeting I'll have another week and a half to label and bind the quilt.

Purple Background Quilted, but Haven't Touched the Geese Yet

It turns out that there's a REASON that professional longarm quilters charge so much more for custom quilting than they do for allover, edge to edge designs!  This is taking an INSANELY long time.  It took me over 8 hours to mark the quilting design on the quilt before I loaded it and after 18 hours of quilting I was only halfway done with the background quilting in the purple fabric.  

But it's totally worth it.  I made the right choice in marking the entirety of the quilting design ahead of time, due to the scale of the design that I can only see small sections of in my workspace with the quilt on the frame.  I am getting lots of practice quilting along straight and curved ruler edges.  I'm also getting lots of practice traveling over previously stitched lines -- and a little bit of practice ripping out wobbly stitches that I couldn't live with.  

Interestingly, the smaller size L bobbin on my APQS Millennium isn't annoying me as much with the slower pace of custom quilting as it did when I was quilting allover designs.  Instead of running out of bobbin thread every 30 minutes, I'm quilting for hours before I need a new bobbin.  I am using Glide 40 weight trilobal polyester thread in Violet for my top thread and prewound Magna Glide bobbins in the same color with this project.  

One more thing I wanted to show you was my custom printed Spoonflower backing fabric, designed by Wren Leyland:

Check Out the Needle Holes in My Spoonflower Backing Fabric

The jury is still out on this one.  I love, love, LOVE Wren's bold graphic rendering of Psalm 28:7.  I wasn't able to find anything as modern, impactful, and masculine in commercially printed fabrics.  However, the inks that Spoonflower uses are different from commercial prints.  It makes the Kona Solid 100% base fabric feel more like a glazed chintz, and as you can see in the close up above, this does not make for lovely needle holes on the backing side.  The edges of the needle hole are raised slightly, like what I would expect if I was sewing through something plasticky.  I'm hoping that the holes will close up and lay smooth when the finished quilt is washed, or at least be less visible.  I'll let you know.  

But now my coffee is done, an hour of quilting time has been gobbled up by this blog post, and that quilt ain't quilting itself up there!

My Tuesday To-Do is to finish ALL of the quilting on this project prior to the church staff meeting next Tuesday morning, and that includes those geese!  Wish me luck!

I'm linking up with:

TUESDAY

·      Colour and Inspiration Tuesday at http://www.cleverchameleon.com.au

·       To-Do Tuesday at Stitch ALL the Things: http://stitchallthethings.com

WEDNESDAY

·      Midweek Makers at www.quiltfabrication.com/

·      WOW WIP on Wednesday at www.estheraliu.blogspot.com

THURSDAY

·      Needle and Thread Thursday at http://www.myquiltinfatuation.blogspot.com/  

Pineapple Borders (Finally!) and More Flying Geese

I'll bet you thought you hadn't heard from me because I was sewing up a storm over Lars's graduation quilt, didn't you?  Well, progress has been made on that front, but we'll get to that in a minute.  For today, we're taking a little detour and revisiting the long-overdue borders for my pineapple log cabin quilt.

Look Who's Getting Borders Today!

First, I'm adding a 3/4" finished border (same size as the pineapple strips) in Kona Solids 196 Blue Jay, and after that I'm adding a wider border in a floral Kaffe Fassett print.

Why has it taken me so long to add these borders?  Well, first of all, I had to prewash the uncut border yardage, and I loathe the washing and the ironing and the folding and the cutting of the borders.  Then, I was trying to figure out where I could lay this gigantic quilt top flat to measure for the borders and pin them on.  I finally decided to use the rails of my longarm frame for this.

Using the Longarm Frame to Measure for Border Length

As you can see, I've draped the quilt top over the quilt top roller of my frame with the center seamline centered on the rail and smoothed it out nice and flat, but not stretched.  Then I smoothed one of my 1 1/2" (cut width) blue border strips all the way down that center seam, keeping one cut edge right on the seamline down the whole width of the quilt.  I marked the border strip with tailor's chalk on both ends right at the raw edge of the quilt top and then took the border strip to my cutting table to make clean perpendicular cuts with my rotary cutter and ruler.  (For those of you who are not quilters, the reason I'm measuring through the center of the quilt for the border length rather than measuring at the outer edges is to prevent Wavy Border Syndrome in the event that any of those raw bias edges misbehave and stretch on me.  We want a flat, square quilt when we're finished!)

Pinning Border at the Longarm Frame

Then I hung the quilt top off the longarm frame with the edge of the quilt along the quilt top roller and the bulk of the quilt top hanging off the back.  (The canvas wrapped around the roller bar grips the back of the quilt top to hold it in place the same way that a napped design wall will hold up quilting cottons without pinning).

Pinning for the 97D Seam Guide: Perpendicular Pins With Pin Heads to the Left

I'm inserting my pins perpendicular to the raw fabric edges with the pin heads facing to the left, so nothing will stick out and get in the way of my beloved seam guide at the sewing machine.  I thought about sewing with the borders on the bottom so I could "babysit" all the seam allowances and ensure none got flipped in the wrong direction as I was sewing, but decided against it.  As I mentioned earlier, although the neutral strips of fabric have straight grain at the outside of each pineapple block, the diagonal blue and green strips of fabric have stretchy bias edges at the outer edges of the blocks.  I've pressed and starched those seam allowances as flat as can be, so I'm just being really careful as I'm pinning them and checking frequently as I'm sewing.  I just felt like it was important to have the seam allowances and naughty bias edges in direct contact with my feed dogs and the stable, lengthwise grain of my border strips on top.  I've got two of the four blue border strips sewn on so far without having to reach for my seam ripper, so that's how I'll do the other two sides as well.

Oh How I Love Me Some 97D Foot!

It's been over a month since I proclaimed my love for the Bernina #97D Patchwork foot and Seam Guide all over the Internet, y'all, so it's time.  And no, Bernina doesn't pay me to say these things (unfortunately).  Why am I so smitten with this patchwork foot when there are so many other options to choose from?  For one thing, the wider left toe on this foot gives better contact with the widely spaced feed dogs on my 9 mm B 750QE, plus it has a cutout at the back of the foot so I can engage the Dual Feed Footsie for even smoother, more consistent fabric feeding as I sew these borders.  And the seam guide -- Ah, how I love thee! -- It screws right down to the bed of the machine in an instant, no measuring required, just slide it right up to the edge of the presser foot.  The seam guide remains FIRMLY in place until I remove it.  Zero wiggle, zero "play," impervious to vibration.  Unlike the patchwork feet that have a little barrier guide attached directly to the edge of the presser foot, the Seam Guide extends significantly in FRONT of the presser foot.  This is what makes it so awesome.  I'm not looking at the needle or at the edge of my presser foot when I'm piecing.  Instead, I'm watching in front of the foot to make sure that my raw fabric edges are right up against that seam guide.  I'm guiding the fabric through the machine with my left hand just as you see in the photo: my pointer finger is making sure that the fabric edges touch the seam guide in front of the foot, and the rest of the fingers of my left hand are behind the foot to ensure that the bulk of this ginormous quilt top doesn't drag it sideways as it feeds through the machine.  My right hand was holding the phone to snap the picture, but when I'm actually sewing I'm using my right hand to fluff and position the project in my lap so it feeds smoothly to the machine, check the seam allowances underneath, etc.  But the secret of the 97D foot + seam guide success is that, if the fabric is lined up precisely 1/4" seam allowance in front of the foot and it's feeding straight as you sew, the fabric edge will be precisely 1/4" away when it reaches the needle.  I find that I'm able to sew a bit faster with the 97D + Seam Guide combo, without losing accuracy.  And getting things done faster is a good thing!  That's why, when I bought the B 475QE "Goldilocks" machine for portable piecing, I purchased another Seam Guide separately to use with the #37 Patchwork foot that came with the 475QE.

Speaking of things that need to get done faster...  Yes, I've been working on the graduation quilt!  12 of the 48 curved flying geese arcs have been paper pieced.  That's 25% of them done at the end of the first week in March, so I'm on track to finish all of them by the end of the month, sort of.  I haven't touched them since Saturday and today is Tuesday...   

See Those Green Tag Board Templates On the Purple Fabric?

Meanwhile, I've ordered an 18" x 18" sheet of 1/4" thick acrylic from Amazon and informed my husband that he has been drafted as my Custom Template Maker for this quilt.  See those green tag board templates on top of the folded purple fabric in the photo above?  I need to cut 48 of each of those two shapes out of the purple fabric, and even if I had the time and patience to trace around the tag board and cut each piece individually, I'm concerned that the skinny ends of that one template will bend as I'm tracing around it.  I found an article on the Internet from Bob Vila about how to cut acrylic sheets with a saw and told my husband that if Bob Vila can do it, so can he!  Let's make it a family project, right?  All of my store bought acrylic rulers and templates for rotary cutting are only 1/8" thick, but Bernie says that's too thin for him to cut with a saw; it would shatter.  Hopefully I can still rotary cut around the thicker templates, and an added bonus will be that I can also use the thicker templates for ruler work on the longarm machine when it comes time to quilt this bad boy!  I'll let you know how that works out when the acrylic sheet shows up.  Fingers crossed!

 

In other grad quilt related news, look what showed up in today's mail:

This is the custom-printed backing fabric from Spoonflower, designed by C. Wren Leyland:

Kona Solid Backing Fabric, Custom Printed with Psalm 28:7

SO EXCITING!!  Now I need to decide whether or not to disregard the Spoonflower instructions to prewash this fabric.  It's printed onto Kona Solid fabric, the same as the (unwashed) quilt top fabrics, so leaving the backing unwashed until after quilting should ensure comparable shrinkage in all of the quilt fabrics.  However, I didn't think to check my sample swatch for colorfastness before I washed it and I have no idea whether there might be residual dye in this Spoonflower fabric.  I'm sure the dyes they use for their digital printing are totally different from what Kona uses to dye their solids at the mill.  Hmmm...  I think I'll snip off a sample to check for dye bleed and if I have to, I'll give it a COLD water wash to rinse loose dye with as little shrinkage as I possibly can.  It will be fine, right?

But first -- Gotta get these borders on the pineapple quilt, though, so I can store the finished quilt top safely out of harm's way (and free up the longarm frame for quilting the vintage quilt top that's mid-repair).

And so, without further ado, here are my To-Dos for Tuesday:

• Complete solid blue and print borders for the Pineapple Log Cabin quilt
• Piece 12 more geese arcs for Lars's Geese In Circles graduation quilt

That is PLENTY ambitious for me, since each of those geese arcs is taking roughly an hour and a half to an hour and forty-five minutes to piece!  Time to get back to work!

I'm linking up with:

TUESDAY

·      Colour and Inspiration Tuesday at http://www.cleverchameleon.com.au

·       To-Do Tuesday at Stitch ALL the Things: http://stitchallthethings.com

WEDNESDAY

·      Midweek Makers at www.quiltfabrication.com/

·      WOW WIP on Wednesday at www.estheraliu.blogspot.com

THURSDAY

·      Needle and Thread Thursday at http://www.myquiltinfatuation.blogspot.com/  

My March OMG Requires Reinforcements: Teaching My Mom How to do Foundation Paper Piecing

Look Who Learned Foundation Paper Piecing Today!

I looked at my calendar last night and realized that I only have seven weeks to get this quilt top made if I want it to be ready to quilt when I get back from Quilt Week at the end of April, and I gotta be honest, folks -- I was feeling panicked.

But then I remembered how much fun I had with my mom -- and how much sewing we got done in a relatively short period of time -- when she helped me make my Victorian Christmas caroling costume:

My Ridiculous Caroling Getup, Made With My Mom in 2015

I did almost all of the sewing myself, but I never could have finished it without my mom there to explain the convoluted pattern instructions, help with fittings, keep me motivated and on task, and assist with hand stitching that trim along the skirt hem while I was frantically sewing something else at the machine.  I always seem to be sewing something frantically at one of my machines, don't I?  

And then I remembered how much fun I had with my mom and HER mom back in 2001 when they helped me sew a yellow duck costume for Lars's very first Halloween:

Lars's Duck Costume Made by Me, My Mom, & My Grandmother in 2001

I wish someone had taken pictures of us working on these projects!!

Anyway, when the panic sets in and the situation looks desperate, that's a great time to call your mom, don't you agree?  Now my mom do all kinds of alterations, tailoring, clothing and costumes and even bridal gowns, but she's not a quilter (yet).  Before today, she'd never made so much as a 9-patch block before!  Nevertheless, despite not knowing anything about quilting and never showing any interest in learning, my mom agreed to learn in order to help me get Lars's quilt done on time.  If she and I make it together, then Lars's quilt will be made with twice as much love!  Still can't believe that little dude in the duck costume is about to graduate from high school...

My Mom's First Attempt at Paper Piecing on my Bernina 475QE

So we each made one of the flying geese arcs, side by side and step by step in my studio.  Another bonus of having two Berninas set up for paper piecing in the same room!  Now my mom can come and sew with me without having to pack up her machine and bring it from home.

See?  Paper Piecing Is Fun, and Doesn't Hurt (Until You Nick Yourself With the Rotary Cutter)

So now there are five completed arcs (out of 48 needed) plus two more that we started after dinner and abandoned when we realized that A: We were tired and B: The alarm clock goes off EARLY on Sunday morning.  I'm lucky that my mom lives close by but still don't like her to drive home too late at night when she's tired.

Five Arcs Pieced, Forty-Three to Go!

I am SO EXCITED about this project now -- I LOVE how those geese look together!  Pinned in the center of the circle is a swatch of the Spoonflower custom printed fabric that I'm 90% sure I'll be ordering for the backing.  I put the swatch through the laundry today to make sure it's colorfast and I didn't notice any fading at all.  The washing softened it up a little, too -- I'm going to have it printed on the same Kona cotton base fabric as the solid colored fabrics used in the quilt top, and I did NOT wash or preshrink any of those, so probably best not to prewash the backing either.

Tomorrow I'm only singing at the early church service so we can take Lars back to UNC-Asheville for a second visit.  The theatre department gave us comp tickets to a matinee performance of their one act plays.  We're looking forward to seeing the play, but also looking forward to the chance to see more students, faculty, parents, etc. to get a better feel for this school as Lars narrows down his options.  May 1st is the deadline for making a decision and sending a deposit.  

Whether I get any more sewing done tomorrow will depend on how late we get back to Charlotte and how tired I am at the end of the day!  But I do have my quilting bee on Monday afternoon and I'm planning to take this project "on the road" every opportunity that I get until it's done.  Don't expect to see much in the way of hand stitching from me until this quilt top is ready to quilt!

My One Monthly Goal (OMG) for March is to piece all 48 arced flying geese for this quilt, with mom's help!

I'm also linking up with:

SUNDAY

·      Slow Sunday Stitching at http://kathysquilts.blogspot.com/  

·      Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework http://quiltingismorefunthanhousework.blogspot.com

MONDAY

·      Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts http://smallquiltsanddollquilts.blogspot.com 

·      Main Crush Monday at Cooking Up Quilts http://www.cookingupquilts.com/

·      Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt http://lovelaughquilt.blogspot.com/

·      Moving it Forward at Em’s Scrap Bag: http://emsscrapbag.blogspot.com.au/