Week 3

It's hard to believe I've been up here so long already! It's been fun and I got my quilt done!

 The pattern is just an 8" block that is either upright or on its side. There are a bunch of 2" squares in it that make it look a bit more complicated than it is. I used only batiks. I'd collected several packs of jelly rolls, already cut 2 1/2 inch strips of batik and I think  there were about 200 strips, mostly different fabrics plus 27 larger pieces of fabric that I cut the bigger pieces out of so it's a hodge podge of color.
I have a king size waterbed with the wooden sides so my quilt needs to be bigger to cover the sides. My plan was that it would be 116 inches square. So I sewed away. I guess I sometimes did a scant 1/4 inch seam allowance because when my sister's friend had it ready to put on her long arm quilting machine, she told me it was 119 inches square which was just a bit too wide for her machine so I took it back home. I removed the outside border on one side, took one whole strip of blocks off and then replaced the border.
When I picked it up from her after she'd quilted it she said it was 111 x 120 inches. That's definitely big enough. I've already sewn the binding on but I like to hand tack it then onto the back so I"ll do that when I get home again.

 So the backing on my quilt. I'd stopped at Hancocks in Paducah on the way north and got several pieces of batik 106 inch backing from their remnants table. So I figured I'd just put a couple of them together and see how that worked. In measuring them, they were only 100 inches wide so I needed to add more than a few inches to the width. Oh yeah, and the pieces were only about 1 1/2 yards long so I needed 2 pieces for the backing plus the pieces to fill them in. Kind of eclectic looking but it worked and who cares what's on the back!

 Thursday there was some activity in the front yard. Apparently the city had decided that the sidewalks needed to be patched. One spot was directly in front of my sister's house so they brought barriers to put on either side of the spot and then jack hammered the side walk with this machine. Kind of fun to watch and sure fast to do!

They got it all ready to be poured with new concrete and left it. That was Thursday. Apparently Friday it was going to be too hot so they didn't finish it. It's been ready all weekend. It was just over 30 Celcius for the high Friday, just over 90 degrees, so that's apparently too hot up here. It wasn't awfully humid either. I don't think they'd survive down south but then our guys wouldn't survive up here in winter!!
It's time for me to pack up. I'm leaving early Wednesday morning to head south of the border and home.
So probably not much sewing left for me to finish up here for now.
Until next week, keep weaving!
Carol