Design Wall Monday

Hello, again its me!  I am a blob today.  I spent all of last week preparing my seven quilts for our Covered Bridge Quilter's Guild Bi-Annual Show.  As of Monday last week, I had three quilts left to load and quilt.  I loaded and quilted the first quilt on Monday. The first quilt was my Country Threads 2013 Block of the Month. That made me feel more confident that things were going to go well all week, well I wasn't that lucky.

 

After unloading this quilt, I loaded my Rustic Hearts quilt Monday afternoon.

The top border went smoothly using Navy Omni thread.  I used the piano key swag border by Handi Quilter.  Then I switched to Light Sage by Omni for the quilt center.  I used heart one e2e for the center design.  Things went pretty smoothly until I took a break for dinner with my husband.  I went back down after dinner to try and finish the quilt up and the machine started stitching basting stitches and hopping around not following the pattern.  I stopped for the night, picked out the stitches and shut down the machine.  I prayed that a fresh start on Tuesday morning would be a good thing.

 

Tuesday morning dawned.  I made breakfast for my husband and myself.  As Rod headed out the door, I decided to run downstairs, turn on the machine and prayed for a great start with no machine malfunctions.  Things did start better than things ended on Monday.  I got the center of the quilt about done and the phone rang.  It was our contractor wanting to come take some more measurements for our new addition.  EEK!  I was still in my pjs and robe.  After a mad dash upstairs, I flew into some clothes and tried to meet him at the door in a cool manner.  I always try to shower and get dressed first thing each morning so I don't get caught in my robe.

 

After the contractor left, I headed by downstairs thinking, "I am so close to finishing this top".  I was ready to advance the quilt to finish the bottom border.

Here's a picture of my next problem.  I was at least two inches short of backing fabric.  Yikes! Yes, I had more fabric to match, so I followed my friend, Corry's instructions on how to add fabric without unloading the quilt.  It worked slick and I was back in business quickly finishing the border.  Unloaded and turned the quilt to finish the side borders.  Now number two quilt was quilted.

Loaded the final quilt #3 for the week.  I finished #3 at 3pm on Wednesday.  

 

Now on to all the finishing work:  labels, sleeves and bindings.  At this point I had four bindings, five labels and seven sleeves to sew on. 

Above, is my bag of threads to match bindings and labels, along with pins, needles, and scissors.

I sewed on all the bindings, made sleeves or matched pre-made sleeves with each quilt.

I lined up the labels that were left and snuggled in on the couch for an all-nighter of hand-sewing Wednesday night.  (Label tutorial available HERE.)  Yes, you read it right.  I stayed up all night to finish everything necessary to enter all seven quilts in the judging first thing Thursday morning.  I turned the quilts in at 7am and went home to sleep.

 

I got a few hours of sleep, ate a quick bite of lunch and headed back to the judging to be a scribe all afternoon.  Thanks to Chris Moline from Naperville, IL, for doing a great job at judging.

 

Friday, we spent the day setting up the show.  The show was open to the public Saturday and Sunday.

Grandma's Attic was the show's theme.

The Dresden Kaleidoscope was the queen size raffle quilt.

 

Thank you to one and all for all your hard work or for attending the show and making it a great success.

 

Today I am linking up with Judy at Patchwork Times, Nurdan at Hug-a-Bit Quilts, and Beth at Cooking up Quilts.  Tomorrow's blog will be on preparing for your trip to Paducah or a big show along with a free basket pattern for organizing.

 

Yours in quilting,

Terry