Quilting Day, Chapter 2

Hello April, and welcome! You've been a long time in coming!

On Wednesday, I went with Terry to quilt all day at Mary's Barn.

On Thursday, my long-time friend and new retiree, Sharon, came to quilt all day at my house. Oh, how I have enjoyed these 2 days!

Sharon arrived around 10:30 and we got right to work. She wanted to finish a quilt she began on Veterans' Day of 2009, using 2 layer cakes of a fabric line called Aviary. She did finish the quilt top, and even has the backing prepared, too. It is a pieced back and it is going to look fantastic.

We had a lot of catching up to do! We taught together at CHS for 30 years, and when I retired in 2009, we saw a lot less of each other. Her schedule became more hectic as mine was considerably less so. Finally, at the end of February, she reached eligibility for retirement. Those intervening months when she still taught, and I didn't were months where we really lost touch. We were accustomed to daily visits, so it was an adjustment barely seeing each other once a month! Aaagghh! We have much catching up to do!! Consequently, we covered a lot of ground while we quilted. Can't you just hear us? Quilts, kids, quilts, books, quilts, politics, quilts, teaching, quilts, vacations, quilts -- well, you get the picture.

One result of our day of quilting is our committing every Tuesday to sewing together, either at her house or mine. We are determined to try to get our fabric stashes whittled down! I thnk I am going to like the discipline of a set time and day for quilting. I work much more reliably with "appointments" as opposed to relying on myself to get motivated. (I'm a procrastinator, big time!!)

While Sharon worked on her Aviary creation, I continued the work from yesterday - chugging away on the Kaffe Fassett Broken Dishes quilt. The time it takes for each block is daunting. There are 2 sizes of triangles needed for this quilt. The block used for the interior consists of 16 smaller quarter-square triangle units. These take f-o-r-e-v-e-r to construct. I need 42 of them and have 27 finished, all made one at a time (not assembly-line sewing). For the remaining 15, I am going with the assembly-line method. It's still slow going, but hopefully some finished blocks are not far off.

The block used in the border consists of 4 quarter-square triangle units. Much larger and more user-friendly! I need 30 of these blocks, and had 16 completed. I have actually now finished 6 more of these blocks, so my total is 22 - only 8 more to make!! They go together so much faster than those little 16-unit buggers!

We sewed until 6:45pm, at which time we had to rush off to our book club meeting. That was just up the road from my house, and we planned this day to work out so we could move directly from quilting to book club. After book club, we came back here and tidied up the clutter.

It was a wonderful day to celebrate Sharon's first full month of retirement, marked by a finish - her UFO top and backing ready to be sent off for quilting. What a sense of accomplishment! It also brings with it a feeling of promise of all that we can get done now that we have established a regular time for quilting together.