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!