Making Progress!

Last week I began working on this quilt top.  I think I've shown you the blocks when they were on the design wall last week.   I had bought some fabric for sashing during shop hop day (my quickest trip EVER to Tiny Stitches) and I think I had two windows of time to work, about 15 minutes long each, and began sewing the vertical pieces to the blocks and making rows but then I discovered I didn't have enough of that fabric for the border around the rows as I was going.  A fret began to grab me, even as I was too tired and weak to work more.  I began to think about what I would do next if I couldn't get more of this fabric, oh, and I called my dear sweet Melinda who works at the shop and in fact was going in to teach that day as luck would have it.  I emailed her pictures of the fabric and asked her to buy me another half yard please.  She was willing but couldn't find the fabric in the green section.  She asked Mindy to look for it the next day.  I was hopeful but beginning to thing I'd have to go to plan b.  Don't ask me what it was, I can't remember any more.  LOL.

A friend of mine came to visit me on the next day and I asked if she could please take me over to Tiny Stitches.  I was still not feeling good but I really wanted to look for myself.  We drove over there and I walked in, Mindy was working and knew immediately that I was coming to find this fabric.  Of course I had a scrap of the green, she looked at it and said, oh that looks blue to me.  She went right to the blue section and found the bolt immediately.  I love Mindy a lot but I really do think it's green fabric, definitely on the blue half of green rather than yellow which is much more popular these days, but green at any rate.  I didn't care, I was just glad she got the bolt.  I bought extra too, so I could use it for binding too when I get there.  These blocks were a little wobbly but I think the quilt will do well when it's quilted out.

It took a lot of work and effort but I did finally get the horizontal sashing on and the inner border and then cut and pieced on the outer border.  There's no way this 1990's fifth ever quilt in my life is ever going to look like anything but a 1990's quilt, but honestly, I love the floral fabric and I'm glad to be getting it re-worked to something I actually might have enjoyed better.  I'm going to use it to practice some of the more challenging quilting options out there that I tend to chicken out on.  Right now it's just a big enough wahoo that I got the top finished.  I'm slowly working my way through it cutting out all the loose threads that are every where from having dismantled the original setting that was so awful.  It's the kind of work that I can do while watching NCIS, it's going to take a while but that's okay.  :)  It enough to say I have a completed top.


Actually, I have 2 completed tops.  For reasons I'll explain another time I was able to put my hands on a lot of UFO's in the past few weeks.  One of them is Sherwood Forest Romance which I loved when I made it during a Tiny Stitches retreat in January 2011, and finished the top the same week of the retreat if I recall correctly (and posted pics here, I think) but didn't love the border I put on.  I showed it to Melinda while she was here recently and agreed that the border doesn't need to be removed, just cut down.  Yesterday I cut it from 12" to 7.5" and I love it so much more.  I turns out I have more of the floral fabric to make the backing I think so I'm going to have Melinda who is a professional quilter go ahead and complete this one for me.  So really, that was finishing 2 tops this week.  Not bad for a girl still doing serious recovery from brain surgery.  LOL