rick's quilt

It has been a busy week, but I managed time to bind not one but two quilts!

I'll just share the finish of one this week.

Rick's quilt.

Rick is a guy I work with.  He's feisty and speaks his mind, but he is also a hard worker and smart.  So in all, the balance is in favor of him being well-liked.  This is his retirement job.

A few months back, he had a stroke.

He is doing better than he thought (though we all expected him to do well because he's stubborn enough to not let this slow him down any more than is absolutely necessary), but he has very little energy to do anything.  That may get better with time, it may not.  But for the job we do, there is no way he could return.

So he retired.

Again.

And I decided he needed a quilt.

After a little Pinterest browsing, I came across this pattern and decided it would be great.  Grey background and blues and greens for the squares.  Maybe some yellow, but who knows.  We'll see what the stash provides.

Next up was to modify the pattern to my liking.  The lap size and twin size were both the wrong dimensions in my brain, so I made it square - a size between those two.

I pulled fabrics from my stash (and took no photos, apparently - remember this has been a whirlwind of many quilts lately) and cut, mixed and matched pieces and started sewing.

Oh, apparently I did take a photo of the background.  (Quarter for scale.)

These went SO FAST compared to the previous few quilts.  Of course, having only 7 or 8 pieces per block made things a lot simpler!

In just a few days of steady sewing sessions, I had all the blocks ready for a layout.

The pattern does have a few blocks floating in the borders, but until I had this layout, I wasn't sure what I would use.  I wanted to make sure I could put the floaters where I needed to without issue, so I made those last.

Of course the long seams are no fun, but before long, I had a whole top!

It seems bigger here than I anticipated, but my math is correct.  This time.

It didn't sit long - there is talk among some coworkers of getting together with Rick for dinner sometime, so I wanted this to be ready when and if that happens.

I had bought a fabric for the back of Woodland Wonderland, planning to quilt it first, but wasn't sold on it.  And then realized it would be way better for this quilt - AND it is the right size!

(Pardon the fact that it is already quilted here.  Also, my camera (oh, smartphone, why can't you just replicate colors accurately?) has made it muddier than it really is.  It is still a little bit of a "dirty" green, but it is a bit brighter than you see here.)

As I was piecing the back, I realized this print is also by Robin Pickens - so both the pattern and the quilt back are from the same designer.  I didn't intend that at all!

Anyways, I got it loaded on the longarm with plans...

...which I talked myself out of.  And then back into because don't be a wimp.  And then back out of because the alternate plan would require less thread burying and would go faster.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

I had to turn the whole thing 90 degrees to complete the 35 million straight lines needed.

I don't think it went faster.

But I was not burying any threads, so there's that.

And then it sat, waiting.  It joined the other pile (there were 5 at one point) of quilts needing hand-sewing of binding.  A pile I wasn't sure when I would get to.

Because in addition to other quilts needing attention, I was trying to whittle down the cat hammock fabric for another donation (turns out it was way smaller than anticipated, but thanks Carol!) to fit in my storage spot and preparing for a pig roast that happened Saturday.

Once I had the donation and could relax about that a bit and once I had the house and yard cleaned up enough for the party and could relax about that, I had time.

So Friday I bound Rick's quilt.

Sprayed it AGAIN to get the last bits of the blue marker off.  (Those darn things don't want to leave a mark worth beans, but then once you get one, good luck making it go away!)

And then had the hubby and his cousin (here to help roast the pig - though once you get it on the roaster, 99% of the work is done, but you know boys...they gotta watch the fire!) hold it up for me since it was fairly windy on Saturday morning.

You can see the quilting quite well here, but here's a closeup if you'd like it.  You can tell I used green thread, but it blends fairly well.  (Colors are more true in the whole quilt photo.)

I used the seams as a guide and quilted about 1/4" either side.  I had to mark some to keep straight in the middle of blocks, but the hardest was the borders - that's where there was a lot of blue marker that didn't want to come out.

I think I got it all.

Quilt stats:

Pattern: Blockstep by Robin Pickens

Size: 72x72"

Pieced and quilted by me.

I hoped Rick would make it to the pig roast - I hoped he was having a good day.  But he did not come.  I guess that means he was having a bad day because he gave me SUCH a hard time last year that he was unable to come, he knew better than to not show up this year!

Oh well.

Back to plan B, which is dinner out with him and coworkers.  I'll chat with them later this week and see who is interested and then plan from there.

I also managed, on Saturday once the pig was loaded and last-minute cleaning was done, before the final setup needed to be done, to bind Woodland Wonderland.  I also expected its recipient to be here, but she wasn't feeling well.  So I now have two quilts packed up, ready to give, sitting here.

The pig roast went well.  We had fewer people than last year, but I think everyone had a good time.  And the food was amazing, as always.  Today the hubby and I did the final bits of cleanup (taking back cans and bottles, returning the weed eater that looks like a push mower that we borrowed, etc.) and we're back to normal.  The hubby has this week off work, so it's not entirely normal, but at least there's not a panic of cleaning and preparing any more!

In our garage, in all this prep over the past few weeks, we found this nest:

Mama is a sparrow and sometimes stays on the nest, but often flew off when we were in there getting something.  There were 5 little speckled eggs in there and then, a few days later, I peeked in and there were babies!  (Kinda hard to see, but I promise there are babies in there.)

It's in an old plunger that was stuffed between the side of the garage and a railing.  It's been there since we moved in and wasn't in the way so it stayed.  There is no water out there, so I don't understand the plunger, but we've found a lot of odd stuff in this old farmhouse, so I'm sure at one point it made sense to someone!

Today what is left of my quilt guild is having a sewing day, so I think Tiny Stars is going to start getting bound.  Hooray!

Off to have some breakfast and head out to hang with friends!

Happy quilting!

Katie