Custom Quilting Marybeth's circa 1984 UFO + Cranking Out Deco Blocks

Happy Monday, everyone!  Congratulations to the Eagles fans out there, and my condolences to the Chiefs fans.  Not that I watched even five minutes of the Superbowl -- I'd rather sit in my laundry room for four hours watching the clothes go round and round than sit in front of a television watching grown men run around and clobber each other over a weird-shaped, ugly ball.  So HAH!  My husband and sister-in-law are from Philly, however, so while they were up at the house cheering their team I snuck off to the quilting studio to start quilting the borders on my friend Marybeth's UFO sampler quilt that dates back to 1984.

Wasatch Bella Bella Feather Border and Corner Quilting Design

When Marybeth showed me these blocks and told me the story of the quilt, I promised her that if she finished the quilt top I would custom quilt it for her.  This was supposed to be a "big boy" quilt for her son Nathan, who is now a married father in his forties.  The blocks are hand pieced and hand appliqued in neat, even stitches and it would be an intolerable shame if the quilt never got finished at all.  

Challenges for Marybeth included finding suitable border fabric, because she didn't have enough left of the fabrics from the blocks and may have used the fabric for some other project over the years.  Although there is no purple in her quilt blocks, I think the solid purple border fabric she chose works really well because it's the right value and hue to coordinate with the other colors well.

Challenges for Rebecca included coming up with quilting designs that would complement the vintage 1980s style of the sampler blocks and fabric without overpowering them, and without skewing too modern or too formal.  Another challenge was remembering how to lay out and size a border design to fit the quilt border and to accommodate for the quilt drawing up during stitching...  Too bad I didn't revisit this Q-Matic border quilting tutorial on Bernina's We All Sew blog before I loaded this quilt.  I loaded, basted, and did all of the stitch in the ditch quilting with monofilament thread a couple of months ago, and I did not remember Bernina Educator Denise Jones' tips about marking the center and quarters of the long sides of the quilt to make placing the border designs easier.  Next time!  Here's a shot of Marybeth's quilt on my frame where it languished for weeks, waiting for me to pick a design and get up the courage to start quilting it already!

Post-SID, Pre-Border Quilting Paralysis Syndrome

New Project In My Pipeline: Seven Sisters or Seven Stars Quilt for Hand Piecing

Inspiration: Seven Sisters Quilt Top by Martha Dellasega Gray (2014)

 

Isn't that Seven Sisters quilt top glorious?!  It was completed in 2014 by Martha Dellasega Gray and you can read all about it on her Q is for Quilter blog here.  I can't help myself, I have to make one, too (or at least START one!).  But before we start talking about the new project, I should do a quick recap of all my preexisting sewing projects for the sake of accountability:

• My StyleArc Nova Midi Dress: Fabric purchased, nothing cut out yet, found my Swedish Tracing Paper but still need to clear off my cutting table before tracing off the pattern pieces and making a start.  Still weighing pros and cons of sizing/pattern alteration options and bodice construction methods, and need a good stretch of uninterrupted time to work on that (I've had mostly fits and snatches of time here and there for sewing lately).
• My Deco Quilt: Remaining blocks for the entire quilt have been all cut out and ready to sew since before the move, but I haven't touched this one in over two months.  I am finding that I really miss having a big design wall where I can arrange/display a work in progress.  Seeing the quilt take shape on my design wall while working on the blocks was a major motivator in my previous studio, whereas completed blocks packed away in the closet are literally out of sight and out of mind.  There is one large wall in the central hallway of our new home that would work for a design wall, just to the left of our shared office and directly across from my little sewing room...  I have suggested a design wall in this location to my husband several times but the idea has not been well received thus far.  😞.  

My Deco Quilt In Progress, On My Old Design Wall, Boo Hoo...

Ten-Year Projects In Progress: Update on Frankenwhiggish Rose, Jingle BOM, + Deco Quilts

So...  I put my Whig Rose blocks back up on my design wall yesterday morning to see how much work remains to be done on them.  I started this needle turn appliqué project in March of 2014 (you can read about it here) and it's been an on-again, off-again kind of thing.  I'm finding it really monotonous to appliqué the same shapes over and over again.  The reason I haven't started any of the Sarah Fielke 2022 Block of the Month projects I signed up for is that I wanted to finish THIS appliqué project before starting on a new one, and this one ain't finished yet!

FrankenWhiggish Blocks on November 12, 2022

Just for kicks, let's compare today's photo to the one from the last time I had these blocks up on my design wall, back in January of this year:

FrankenWhiggish Blocks on January 12, 2022

So it took me TEN MONTHS to complete eighteen of those wretched little tulips!  AAAARGH!!  And I still have ten more to go.  

Happy First Day of Fall 2022! Nancy's Trail to Kansas Quilt + Elaine's Yellow Brick Road Quilt

 At exactly 9:03 PM EDT today, the Sun will traipse across the Celestial Equator.  Do you know what that means?  It means that today is the first day of FALL, despite temps still in the nineties and the threat of boob sweat stopping us Southerners from decking ourselves out in sweaters as we long to do.  We will rip out our impatiens and plant mums, and pile pumpkins, gourds, and random bales of hay on our suburban porches.  We may still be wearing sandals for a few months longer, but we will be choosing fall colors for our pedicures from here on out.  It's all about "mind over matter" as we celebrate the arrival of Fake Fall in the Carolinas.  

To help us all get in the mood for the new season, I've been holding back a couple of Fall client quilts to share with you today.  Grab your pumpkin spiced latte, your pumpkin muffins, slather on some pumpkin spice hand cream and if it STILL doesn't feel like it's fall, try lighting a pumpkin spice candle or two.  Here we go!

Nancy's Piecing the Trail to Kansas Quilt

There is a story behind this quilt, and another story behind THAT story...  When Nancy contacted me about this project, it had been languishing as a UFO (UnFinished Object) for quite some time.  The pattern is called Piecing the Trail to Kansas by Lynne Hagmeier of Kansas Troubles Quilters, and it comes with a historical fiction "journal" that has a chapter for each month about the joys and sorrows experienced by a family of pioneers on the wagon train to Kansas Territory in the 1850s.  The quilt block for each month related to what was happening in the book for that month's chapter.

Nancy tells me that she really got into the story about the pioneer experience and had enjoyed piecing the quilt top as a BOM (Block of the Month) program at a local quilt shop, but once the BOM program ended, her enthusiasm for finishing it petered out.

Nancy's 79 x 90 Trail to Kansas Quilt, Finished at Last with Primitive Fall E2E

I'm so glad she brought this to me because it's a gorgeous quilt that deserved to be finished!  There is also a story behind the Primitive Fall edge-to-edge quilting design we selected for this quilt, featuring pumpkins, moons, stars, birds (crows?), and botanicals.

Detail of Primitive Fall E2E on Nancy's Quilt

In the pattern cover photo below, you can see the additional appliqué elements that were supposed to be added to the background of this quilt.  Nancy had had enough of this project and just didn't feel motivated to do all of that appliqué work, even though the appliqué elements were symbolic representations of the storyline about the pioneer woman's family.  

New Year, New Ambitions, and New Applique Projects for Rebecca!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!  Have you made big plans or resolutions for 2022?  Will you be Eating Less Junk Food, Drinking More Water, Spending Less Money, Achieving Self-Actualization and Becoming One With the Universe?  Or are you mustering your willpower behind resolutions like No New Projects Until the Old Ones are Finished, or Only Using Fabric that you Already Own?  If those are your goals for 2022, I'll be cheering you along from the sidelines but I won't be joining you in your Year of Austerity.  Two years into the Plague, I've had enough of deprivation and restrictions and my New Year's Resolutions are all about MORE instead of less.  More creative challenges, more learning new skills and honing existing ones, and more shopping to support small businesses: local quilt shops, mom-and-pop online sellers, and all of the talented designers whose fabric lines, quilt patterns, and digital quilting designs send so much beauty and inspiration out into a bleak world!

Rebecca's New Applique Projects for 2022:

With that in mind, I've resolved to start THREE of Sarah Fielke's challenging year-long BOM (Block of the Month) projects involving extensive handwork, lots of variety, and excuses to buy more fabric (and cut into plenty of the scraps and yardage already in my stash).  Mwahahaha!

A few weeks ago, I asked y'all to weigh in and help me decide which of these three Sarah Fielke BOM reruns I should join in 2022, and I was hoping your collective feedback would help me to pick one.  Well, that didn't happen!  There was no clear preference for one project, and I am drawn to different aspects of each one.  What I like about all three projects, and what I like about designer Sarah Fielke's style in general, is their playfulness and whimsy -- like beautiful children's book illustrations that captivate a child's imagination.  The techniques are challenging and involve a lot of hand stitching, but the style is just plain cheerful and fun.  I need some FUN in 2022!  If any of you want to join me (and thousands of other quilters around the world) with one of these projects, you still have time to sign up on Sarah's web site here.  The first patterns won't be released until January 31st, so you still have time to pick your project and get your fabrics together!

I'm planning to use lots of scraps and fat quarter yardage from my stash for these three quilts, so the easiest way to ensure that they don't end up looking all alike is to use very different background fabrics for each one.  To that end, I made a quest to one of my favorite Not-Quite-Local Quilt Shops a few days ago, Sew Much Fun in Lowell, NC.

Supporting Local Businesses by Purchasing Way More Fabric Than I Need

Yes, my plan was to just buy yardage for the background fabrics and alternate block fabrics for Happy Days and Simple Folk, and yardage for the center medallion and borders of Down the Rabbit Hole.  As you see in the photo above, I also bought half yard cuts of a bunch of other fabrics that caught my eye, to be cut up for the appliqué and pieced blocks.  It's a good thing I got to the shop 45 minutes before they closed, because I kept finding more and MORE fabrics while they were cutting the ones I'd already picked out...  I was like a toddler in the grocery checkout, grabbing candy bars and tossing them in the cart while mom isn't looking!

My Pineapple Log Cabin Is Quilted, and I LOVE IT SO MUCH!

Oh my gosh, you guys -- I am so, SO pleased with how the quilting turned out on my longtime UFO pineapple log cabin quilt!!!  😍😍😍

Pineapple Log Cabin Quilt with Moulin Rouge E2E

Pineapple Log Cabin FAQs:

• Quilt top measured 120" x 120" before quilting
• Blocks finished at 17 3/4"
• Log cabin strips finished at 3/4" and there are 97 fabric pieces in each block, 3492 in the entire quilt, plus borders
• Quilter's Dream Wool batting
• Glide 40 wt thread in Color 97494 Sea Foam (needle) & Glide 60 wt thread in Light Tan (bobbin)
• Quilting design is Moulin Rouge E2E from Urban Elementz, sized at 8.5"

I was so relieved when I got to the bottom of this quilt without having to piece any extra batting on the sides!  The widest batting comes is a stated width of 120", and packaged batting usually gives you a few inches more than what it says on the package in the length, but the width of a roll is the width of a roll.  Whew!  Normally, I make sure to have at least 4-6" of extra backing AND batting on all four sides of a quilt.

Glide Thread in Sea Foam, Moulin Rouge E2E Quilting Design

Talk about playing "batting chicken!"  So, let's talk about this Sea Foam thread color!  My first instinct for this quilt was a more traditional off-white or ivory thread color, but I wanted to keep the focus on my piecing design and on my fabrics.  

Olivia's Night Stars Baby Quilt AND MaryBeth's UFO Quilt That's Nearly as Old as I Am

I have two very different client quilts to share with you today, one that I was forbidden from posting until after the baby shower that happened this past weekend, and the other is one that I posted on Instagram a few weeks ago but forgot to share here on the blog.  

#1: Olivia's Night Stars Baby Quilt

The baby shower is over, so I finally get to share!  Y'all, I am just in love with this baby quilt that my client Olivia pieced for her sister in-law's baby shower.  The pattern is called "Night Stars," designed by Emily Dennis of Quilty Love (available on Etsy here).  

My Client Olivia's Night Stars Baby Quilt with Circle Melodrama E2E

My client shared that this quilt has much more extensive piecing than the projects she usually makes and it took her a lot longer to complete the quilt top than she anticipated, but she did such an amazing job.  

Mission Impossible: 24 Blocks Completed -- Halfway There!

Okay, you guys -- I just set a timer for 30 minutes because I don't want to fritter the day away writing a novel (again).  However, my mom and I reached my week's goal of finishing half of the blocks for Lars's Mission Impossible: Graduation 2019 quilt yesterday and I couldn't wait to show you how cool those blocks look up on my design wall:

24 Out of 48 -- We're Halfway There!

SQUEAL!!!!  I included the messy ironing board and step ladder in that photo as scale references, so you can appreciate the impact of those big 12" blocks.  (When I sew four blocks together to make an X or an O, each of those will measure 24".)

None of these blocks are sewn together yet, but it's exciting to see them filling up more and more of the design wall.  What you're looking at is the top half of a quilt that will finish at 72" x 96" before quilting.

Twenty-Four Lars-of-Ours Actual, Physical Quilt Blocks On My Design Wall

Although, and this is what I adore about my EQ8 design software -- the computerized design rendering is such an accurate depiction that it's difficult for me to tell which images on my computers are the software design renderings and which ones are photographs of the actual completed blocks on my design wall.  That is an awesome thing, since I'm estimating that the construction of the quilt top alone will come in around 175 hours of labor, without even factoring in the time it takes me to load it onto the longarm frame, quilt it, and bind it.  It is really a blessing to be able to use technology to be 100% certain about my design choices BEFORE investing all of that time and money into a project.

My EQ8 Computerized Design Rendering of Mission Impossible

See what I mean?  No surprises ever again with a finished quilt not looking like I expected when I planned it out at the beginning.  It's a glorious thing.  I've said it before and I'll say it a thousand times again -- EQ8 is the most important tool I use for quilting besides my sewing machine, and worth more than all of my other notions and gadgets combined.  

At this point, all 48 of those foundation paper pieced flying geese arcs have been completed.  In addition to the 24 totally completed blocks on the design wall, another 11 of the outer curve pieces have been sewn and are just awaiting the machine appliquéd inner curve piece.  Yesterday afternoon, when I saw that we were going to hit my weekly goal a few days early, I picked apart the first machine appliquéd block, the one where I attempted to appliqué the geese to the purple background rather than appliquéing the purple piece to the geese, and I redid that block so it's just as lovely as all the others now -- and now all of the seam allowances are pressed towards the purple in every block, too.

Of course, in order to lay these blocks out on my design wall, I had to take down the vintage quilt top that is currently mid-repair.  That one has been percolating in the back of my brain while I was sewing these Mission Impossible blocks together, and my plan has been revised.  

Vintage Quilt Top Repair In Progress

I took the vintage top off the wall thinking that I would use fusible seam tape to hold tears in the existing loosely attached foundation fabric together during "reconstruction" and requilting, but when I got it off the wall and looked at the backside again I decided that it was in such bad shape that it was causing more problems than it was solving.  I started removing it.

Foundation Backing of Vintage Quilt Top

I'm calling it a foundation backing because this white fabric was between the quilt top and the batting in the original tied quilt and the quilt top is attached to this fabric intermittently and irregularly, with seams that are about 4-6" apart in some places but in other places the backing is loose for 12-14" without any connection to the quilt top.  It's not a single piece of fabric, but appears to be several different items sewn together, like an old dress shirt, an old apron, and an old flour sack cloth maybe?  The white fabrics are not the same weight, weaves are different, and I suspect that there is a polyester blend in one of them because the quilt top has shrunk much more than the backing fabric throughout most of the quilt, resulting in these areas where the backing has deep creases and pleats.  Moreover, the quiltmaker did not remove the seams and hems from these cast-off garments before sewing them into the quilt backing, so there are bulky seams in odd places in the backing/foundation fabric that do not correspond to seams in the quilt top itself.  Those would be unpleasant surprises every time I ran into one of them while quilting, and so I started carefully clipping away as much of the backing fabric as I could with my duck billed appliqué scissors, the same ones I use to remove the backing fabric beneath completed appliqué.  Since SOME of these seams are holding the quilt top together, I'm just snipping as close to the seam lines as I can without cutting the thread of the seams themselves.

No Going Back Now...  Removing the Foundation Backing

But I'll have to tell you about how that's going another time, because my timer just went off and my 30 minutes of blog post writing is up!  Time to get back to sewing Mission Impossible blocks!
I'm linking up today's post with:

FRIDAY

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

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

SUNDAY

·      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/

·      BOMs Away at Katie Mae Quilts: https://www.katiemaequilts.com/blog/ 

Hey, Rebecca! This Is How You Prepare Your Quilt Backings! Reminders To Myself for Next Time

The flying geese arcs for my son's graduation quilt are coming along nicely.  39 are finished, and 9 more are needed.  Each paper pieced arc of geese is taking approximately an hour and a half to two hours to complete.  So this week, even before I finish piecing those arcs, I think I need to start cutting out the purple background fabric and working out the kinks of the curved piecing required to turn these arcs of geese into quilt blocks.

This Week's Accomplishments, Bagged, Labeled and Ready for Quilting

But meanwhile, I had some loose ends to tie up with other projects in progress.  Quilt backings!  Remember last week's post, where I said I "just" needed to press, cut into lengths, and seam the backing fabric for my pineapple log cabin quilt?  HAHAHA!!!  How easily I forget how challenging it is to wrestle with accurately measuring and cutting such long pieces of fabric.  It reminds me of trying to make drapery panels, without the help of the giant worktables in a drapery workroom.

I wasted a good hour consulting all of my different quilt books, my APQS Millennium manual and beginner's class notes, etc., trying to remember how much bigger the backing needed to be than the quilt top, whether the seam should be pressed to one side or pressed open, etc.  To save time on future projects, I'm going to be recording all of that information in this post where I can find it more quickly next time around.

• Quilt Top Size + 12" Added to Each Dimension is My Ideal Backing Size.  

• Quilt Top Size + 8" Added to Each Dimension is My Minimum Backing Size for Longarm Quilting.  

• Canvas Leaders on my 12' APQS Millennium Quilting Frame Measure 131 1/2"

• 126" is the Largest Quilt Top I Can Load on My 12' Frame

For my 120" x 120" pineapple log cabin top, I'm using a 45" wide fabric so I'll need three full fabric widths for my backing.  I did NOT prewash the backing fabric this time (due to the unwashed yardage and unwashed jelly roll strips used in the quilt top) and I wanted to cut it into 130" lengths to give me an extra 5" on all sides of the quilt (quilt top + 10") when I load it onto my longarm frame.  My canvas leaders on the 12' frame are only about 132" long, so this is pretty much my max size.  

I wanted the backing lengths to be exactly the same length so there would be no easing of one panel to the next (which would increase the opportunity for ugly puckers or pleats to form in the backing during quilting).  And I wanted my backing to be perfectly square and perfectly on grain, again because the more "perfect" I can make my backing, the LESS trouble I will have loading it straight and quilting it successfully.

Pattern Weights Hold Yardage In Place While I Measure Where to Make the Cut

So I tore the fabric to get straight of grain edges.  And I measured my 130" lengths by smoothing a length of fabric down the edge of my 97" table, marking the 97" point with a pin, and then shifting the fabric down another 33" to the place where I needed to snip and tear the fabric.  This worked well; when I pinned the lengths of fabric prior to seaming them, they were virtually the exact same length.  

Measuring 130 inch Lengths of Fabric on a 97 Inch Table

Needless to say, just cutting my yardage into the three panels I needed for the backing took a lot longer than I thought it would when I said "I just need to cut the backing fabric into lengths and seam them together."  

Pinning Backing Lengths for Seaming, Selvages Still Attached

Once I'd cut my backing into three equal lengths, I pinned them together along the selvage edges prior to seaming them.  Why?  Because of past experiences seaming long lengths of unpinned fabric together and the feed dogs ever so slightly shifting the bottom layer along faster than the top layer, that's why.  Dual feed helps with that, a walking foot helps with that, but the only 100% foolproof way to sew a 130" long seam without the layers shifting is to pin them together!  I leave the selvages on until after sewing the seams because my goal is a perfectly straight seam, and the selvages give me a very stable, straight edge from which to measure my seam line.  Selvage widths vary slightly from one fabric to another, so I set up my seam guide (this is the guide that screws into the bed of my machine) so that my seamline is approximately a half inch inside the selvage.  Yet another reason I prefer this seam guide to the ones that are attached to the presser foot itself -- I can use it for any width seam allowance, not just 1/4".  

Seaming Backing Panels with Seam Guide, Selvages Still Attached

• Seam Backing Panels with Matching Thread, 50/3 or 50/2 Cotton, Using Piecing Straight Stitch #1326 (Stitch Length 2.0, or 10-12 stitches per inch) and Half Inch Seam Allowance. That's because, once pressed open, the thread may show in the seam.

After seaming the backing panels together, I trim away the selvages with my rotary cutter and acrylic ruler before pressing the seams open.  I experimented with using the pinking blade rotary cutter for this step, thinking it might make for a softer ridge at the edges of the seam allowances, but the pinking blade kept skipping even though it was a brand new blade.  I decided the straight cut works just fine.

Trimming Backing Selvages AFTER Seaming Panel Lengths

All of this prep work paid off with smooth, straight seams and a square, flat, appropriately sized backing.  

Trimmed and Pressed Open

The backing SEAMS measure exactly 130", but the pieced backing measures about 132" in the direction that is perpendicular to the seams -- three widths of fabric minus two seam allowances.  The backing will be loaded onto the longarm frame with the seams parallel to the roller bars so that backing seams are not wrapping around the rollers and building up bulk.  That means that I'll be pinning straight selvage edges to my canvas edges (snipping the selvage every few inches to relax the tighter weave) and the couple of extra inches of backing will be in the length of the backing rather than the width.  This is a good thing -- I do NOT want to get the end of quilting this monster only to realize that the backing is too short for the quilt!

Once I'd seamed the backing, pressed seams open, and given the entire backing a final pressing, I had to enlist my husband's help to get it folded and onto a hanger for storage.  I use the pants hangers we get from the dry cleaners for smaller quilts, but for the pineapple quilt top and its backing I needed to use the larger hangers that the dry cleaner gave me when I brought my linen tablecloths in to be cleaned.  

Just as I did with the binding kick I was on a few days prior, I got other backing fabrics ready for quilting while I was in Backing Mode.  My Modern Baby Clam Shell quilt is only going to measure 40" x 40", so that backing just needed to be pressed, folded on the hanger, and bagged with the binding strips and binding thread.

Pressing Baby Clam Backing for Storage; (Vintage Repair Top on Wall Behind)

The vintage quilt repair backing got prewashed in HOT water (since the fabrics in the quilt top have been subjected to so many washings over the years), pressed, seamed, folded and bagged with the binding strips and binding thread.

Vintage Quilt Backing Seamed and Ready to Load

And I attempted to do the same thing with the backing fabric for my Jingle quilt top, only to discover that I had nowhere near enough of that fabric to back that quilt with it!  Aargh!  

This Will Not Be My Jingle Backing Fabric, After All!

Well, better to find that out NOW rather than waiting until the day I hope to start quilting it, right?  I found a replacement 108" wide backing fabric for my 72" x 72" Jingle quilt, ordered 2 1/4 yards of it and prewashed it in the Sanitation cycle of my washing machine to shrink it as much as humanly possible.  All of the blocks and fabrics in the Jingle quilt top had to be repeatedly soaked in boiling hot water with Dawn dish soap to get all of the bleeding dye out, so I wanted to make sure that my backing had the opportunity to do all of its shrinking ahead of time, too.

New 108" Wide Backing Fabric for Jingle Quilt 

This will be fine.  Jingle was always meant for wall display, so no one is going to be looking at the backing fabric anyway.

So now, when I look in my guest bedroom closet, this is what I see:

These Are All Ready for Quilting!

There are three completed quilt tops in this closet that are neatly bagged along with everything needed to load them on the longarm and start quilting: Paint Me a Story, Jingle, and Pineapple Nostalgia.  There is also backing prepared and binding strips cut for the Vintage Repair quilt and the Modern Baby Clam Shell.  Everything is tagged with sizes and notes about batting, color matched binding thread is included with each one, too (I always forget that I'm going to want a strong, construction-weight matching thread for sewing down the binding) and even preliminary quilting thread selections for a couple of them.  Knowing that I have these projects ready to quilt and waiting for me when I return from Paducah Quilt Week in April feels really good -- I'm going to want to reinforce all of the new skills I've learned in my workshops, and I'm all set to do that by quilting real quilts, not just practice samples!

My To-Dos for Tuesday are:

• Finish piecing the remaining nine flying geese arcs for Lars's Geese In Circles graduation quilt, which is due at my church office exactly two months from today (yikes!)
• Cut out the curved purple background sections for all 48 blocks of Lars's quilt
• Start removing foundation papers and piecing the blocks

Grad Quilt In Progress: Foundation Pieced Arced Flying Geese with Binding and Backing Fabrics

My 72 x 96 XL Twin Design for Lars's Geese In Circles Quilt

I really, really would like to have this top completely pieced before I head to Paducah on Easter Monday, which would give me all of May to get it quilted, labeled and bound in time for the May 26th deadline.  Wish me luck!

I'm linking up with:

TUESDAY

·       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/