What’s under the machine today?

I don’t know how my mind works sometimes.  But, I’ve convinced myself that I can finish the quilting on our vacation quilt before we go on vacation so that I can bind it while we are there and it will have been started, worked on, and finished in the cabin we rent.  It’s the equivalent of starting a huge project the week before Christmas. 

When we went on vacation two years ago, I took all the cut pieces for this quilt and got about half of it assembled.  I was way over ambitious about how much I could get done on a family vacation without forgetting that it was the FAMILY vacation.  I was happily surprised and gladly finished the piecing and pin basted it at home.  Then, I took it back to the cabin and started the quilting. 

At some point, the quilting got out of hand.

Honestly, not sure when this happened.  The center is not quilted quite this densely and I suspect that’s the part I quilted in the cabin.  But, as I moved outward, the quilting got tighter and tighter.  Anyway, in my 45 minutes this morning, I pulled it out, found the thread, prepped the machine, and had about 20 minutes to actually quilt.  I got a fair amount done.  It is possible I can finish in four days off, from the 4th to the 7th.  I can at least get far enough that I can attach the binding and bind it in the cabin.  This could be another finish.  I’m really getting into those finished projects. 

I finished this one the other day.  It’s ready to be laundered and blocked.  I’ll take better pictures after that.

I did end up doing straight lines in that narrow outside border.  Thank you to whoever suggested that!

And, I have been blessed with hexie time this week and have managed to get this many basted.

I’m not so bored basting yet that I’m ready to stab myself with a needle, so I’m torn between continuing to baste, while I can, and going ahead and starting to assemble units.   I think I’ll hold off on the units.  I’m flying next week and since I like this as a distraction, it will be better to assemble then.

Be well.  I was planning to work from home but that pesky learning experience, as Nena pointed out, is making us all hop on one foot, rub our bellies in a circle and pat ourselves on the head, all at the same time, and my boss’s parents are in town, so I’m “it” today (pointman who has the boss’s phone number). 

And, yes, I can do all those things simultaneously and caused nothing less than a small miracle of inter departmental cooperation yesterday.  As they tell me, when I need to be the man, I am that man…and you know “that man quilts.”

Lane