Every stitch counts

I've been hard at work. See?

Especially when you work full time in the city.

Things have slowed down a little for me--I've been distracted by the siren call of video games, but now that the summer is coming to an end I'm gearing back up for quilt quilt quilting!

First, I want to start off with a little process picture of the circle blocks from the border I showed off last time. I start off with pieces cut from a template I made:

I've overlapped them a little here so you can see how it looks.

Then I sew them together. I used to use a special foot Neenie got for me, but I've done so many of these little buggers I can do it all by eye and hand without assistance. I am a curve master at this point!

Just line them up, curve to curve, and use that bias!

I might do a tutorial on this eventually, but I've got to finish this quilt before I leave to go to Canada in October! I'm going to smuggle it across the border in my luggage, then mail it from within Canada to give myself more time to work on it and to avoid customs issues.

Wonky angle, I know, but after trimming these were perfect.

Then after they've been ironed and trimmed down it's a simple matter of sewing them together in pairs to make the border. Speaking of which, how's that coming along?

Well...

The border is complete. :) I'm rather proud of how I played with the LRR logo, and with how everything turned out. If you zoom in on this picture you can see the Bear Paw (an inside joke) blocks that will make up the border around the bus. I'll do a more detailed post on those blocks next week.

Piecing the bus.

I've learned one thing from this quilt--I am NEVER doing a quilt without step by step instructions again. Now, I'll make my own if I have to, but I've been way too loosey goosey with the rules for this quilt. There weren't any rules, really--I only knew I really, REALLY wanted that border, and wasn't willing to part with it. Everything else came secondary to finishing the border. I think the quilt itself suffered a little for that. Don't get me wrong, it came out great in the end, but I really should have worked from the inside out if I was going to be so floaty with the numbers on this quilt. But it will all work out in the end!

Ironing the bus.

I'm sorry I don't have better 'as it stands now' pictures of the quilt, but it's so big it's hard to photograph at night, with our beigey carpet and dim lighting in the living room. Hopefully next post I'll have better ones. ><

Ironing like mad.

You might have noticed a couple pictures of me finally! Glenn had so much fun taking pictures of the houses we looked at I asked him to take some pictures while I worked. I'll have to ask him to do that again when the lighting's a little better!

The ever vigilant quilt inspector. I tried to get a neat 'same level'
picture, but she thought it was pettin' time.

You can actually see some of the bear paws in the picture above--I promise, this quilt is going to be worth the wait!

A work in progress.

This week my goal is to have all the pieced blocks finished and assembled by Sunday. Then it's time for a little applique for the bus details, all finished off by two solid weeks of quilting and binding. A wash before the trip in the plane, and my quilt will be off to the races in Canada!

See you next week!