Waiting . . .

Well, my challenge this week was to centre the back of the yellow quilt on the top. How to go about doing so? You see, I want to hand quilt it and fold the outer border of the front to the back for the binding, so at first I thought I would hang the back good side facing me, on the sliding door - as a giant light box - and adjust the top over that and pin. But that didn't work. The tape I used to tack up the back wasn't strong enough to hold it properly in place and the light wasn't strong enough for me to see through the top. Then I thought unclearly about somehow pinning one corner of the hands panel to the place on the top where I thought it should go to be centred, then pin the other corners and adjust. Where would I lay it out to do this, though? It would be good to have a surface into which I could push the pins while I was adjusting. My ironing board came to mind, but I couldn't see this method working all that well.

Finally, I decided I had to just do the obvious: lay the backing on the floor face up and tape it down, then lay the top face down on that, centre it, then pin in place. Once that is done and the backing is trimmed to size, I would fold them up then lay the batting on the floor and put the back and top on top of the batting, smooth it out and pin in place. And that's just what I finished doing. That's good. That's done. But as far as I can figure out, that also means that I won't be using the front border fabric as binding but will sew the lot together pillowcase style. Too bad. But I can't do anything more on it until I get a walking foot for my old machine. So I just called a new place down on Queen Street near Dufferin called The Workroom. It seems like a very cool place and they have recently become an authorized Bernina dealer. So Karen, with whom I spoke, will call me Monday about the walking foot. I just hope I can get it in my hot little hands really fast as I still have hopes to hand this quilt to my daughter for Christmas.

Yes, I am a last minute person.

Until then, I will start tacking mum's quilt together. Here are the blocks laid out on my bed:

And here they are in black and white - I wanted to see how they are grouped value-wise

This seems okay. I can see one change I might make, but really, I think they are just fine as they are. So I'll start joining them together!

Keep your foot on the dogs!

The Back

Well, here it is, the back. It turned out nicely, I think.

Except, for some reason, while figuring out how large to make the pink pieces above and below the hands panel, I came up with the idea that they should be the same cut size as the panel: 15x15. I was wrong, of course. They needed to be 15" wide, but 14.5+14.5+14.5 doesn't add up to 50" which is the size of the top. So I cut two extra pieces and had to sew them to the top and bottom of the edging pieces. You can see the top patch in this photo:

Oh well. It doesn't look too bad. I'm back to work today but will try to get the top, batting, and backing pinned together this week. Maybe I'll even start quilting!

An update on my mum's quilt: All the squares are bound and now I just have to sew them together. I was thinking of keeping it "light", if that's the right word, and tack one to the next once in the middle of the sides of the squares - in other words, I won't sew all one side to one side of the next block, just sew them together at one point. I'm not sure why I want to do this, but it seems like the right thing to do and I think it will be good.

On top of the tacking down I want to put a ribbon bow and to that end I went to Mokuba last week and bought a metre each of several different ribbons. I decided on an lovely transparent red ribbon with gold edging. Mum would like it. She loved red and gold. In their last house together my parents put in wall-to-wall red carpeting.

I tried this white and gold ribbon

but it seemed to get lost, so I tried this other white and gold ribbon. The white had a bit of a blue sheen to it.

But really, I think I bought this one just because I liked it for itself. It too gets lost.

Then I tried this thinner red and gold one

which is nice and stands out better, but I also bought the wider width of the same ribbon

And while I might tend to go for the thinner more discrete ribbon, my mum wasn't a discrete woman: she lived out loud, so I think the wider ribbon is better. What do you think of this bow?

I think this is the way I'll go. I put up pics when it's all together and on our bed.

Until then, keep your foot on the dogs.