march UFO done

I had yesterday off, so I decided it was time to get out the March UFO.  I'm very glad I worked ahead on this one, though maybe if I hadn't, I wouldn't have put it off so long.

The UFO journey began here, last fall.  A trip to an absolutely awesome quilt shop about an hour from home.  They had tons of awesome fabrics and books and patterns, it was hard to restrain myself, but from the moment I saw Bliss online, I knew I wanted some!

I had some time off from work a while back and dug in.  The blocks are deceptively labor intensive.  They require four borders of each print = four seams.  Plus trimming.  Guess this is just another case of me falling in love with a pattern before I dissect it well enough to realize how many pieces it has!  (Nothing worth having is easy, right?)  I made a good dent, then had to move on to other things for a while.

Then in December, Judy announced her UFO challenge and this quilt went on the list.  #1 in fact.  Since the numbers are chosen randomly, this quilt didn't get to go first.  But the number that was chosen first was a pretty easy project and I had time, so I worked ahead.

I got to the point where I had a top (no borders), and stopped there.  I don't much care for long seams, the setting "triangles" at the edges needed trimming to become triangles and I justified my stopping with the knowledge that this quilt's number would come up before the end of the year, so it would be finished.

Well, this month #1 came up.  So I auditioned inner borders and then ignored it for a while longer.  (Everyone really liked the red, but one comment led me to go with the white: it keeps in tradition with the modern style of the prints and quilt design.)  I do not like long seams (I think I may have mentioned that before - like a few dozen times!) and there were points to (try to) match along the way and things are on the bias.  And I have a few other projects in the works - projects with actual due dates.  (I'm really good at procrastinating!)

But yesterday I had the day off work and decided it was time to pull this back out of its box and finish the top (my definition of UFO finished for this challenge).  The month is almost over and I wasn't going to get a much better chance to work uninterrupted.  If you can consider 5 cats and a hubby also with the day off uninterrupted.  (I work well under pressure of deadlines.)

The borders look a little ripply because they are.  I measured and pinned and everything seemed to be going along just fine until I tried to lay it out flat.  For now, they're going to stay this way (mostly because I don't have the desire to rip it all out, but also because it's just going to end up Mt. St. ToBeFinishedSomeday and there's no hurry), but eventually I will fix it.

Of course, no photo is complete without a cat in it.  :)

I also made binding so when I quilt this baby, that fiddly part is already done.  I think it was Judy, of the UFO challenge, who taught me to cut and make binding when you're working on the top.  (Awesome idea!)  Now if I can just figure out a way to keep me from procrastinating sewing the binding half on that is done by hand...

Now it's back to the wedding quilt.  A little at the time to keep my sanity.  (Remember when I told you it was something like 880 pieces?  Seems I'm no good at math; turns out it's 1440 pieces!  I'm glad I figured that out AFTER I'd cut everything and sewn a lot of those pieces to each other.)

I hope you're all having a wonderful weekend.  It's goergous outside, but at noon it was 32F.  Just at freezing.  Where is my spring?

Happy quilting,

Katie