Gray Stripes, Anyone?

I haven't been overly busy this week on Elisa's modern king-size quilt, but I have made significant progress - enough to know that I am heading in the right direction, and that it is going to come together very easily. Besides working on this, I am continuing my hand quilting on the 6-pointed star quilt.

If you recall, I cut all the strips into two lengths - 18" and 24". That 24-inch measurement is going to be adjusted eventually, because not all my fabrics were exactly 42" wide. So the resulting measurement might be more in the range of 21 or 22 inches.

But that's a problem to work out later.

Right now, my goal is to sew all the long columns together. I decided to go with doing all the 24-inch columns first, to see if I have cut enough to make a king-size length - somewhere in the range of 100-105 inches.

I brought all my 24" strips over to the sewing machine, and began randomly grabbing two at a time, sewing them together in chain-piecing fashion. What started out as neat and orderly stacks quickly became a tangled mess, but the system worked, so I kept going. Click back here to see "neat and orderly."

After pressing all the random pairs, I took the strips to the guest room and spread them out on the bed to see how they'd look. Through all, I am trying to be as random as possible.

I snapped the pictures and sent them to Elisa. Waiting on her reply was excruciating - like waiting to see if your name has been drawn for a grand prize - but I didn't have to wait long and she gave it a resounding thumbs up. She used words like "pumped" and "OH.MY.GOODNESS" - I think I'm doing okay. *grin*

Since these pictures were taken, I have sewn more 24" strips together, pressed them, and laid them out on the bed. I will add on until I get 3 lengths in that king-size range.

In addition to working on this quilt, I had to read a book for our book club meeting (later today). This month's selection was Still Life With Bread Crumbs by Anna Quindlen. I spent Wednesday reading it, and it was a mostly satisfying effort. It was a bit impatient at times, for it seemed like she could have been a bit less tedious in unfolding her narrative. On the plus side, I liked the characters and her skill with describing a setting is magnificent. I won't hesitate to read another of her books, certainly.

Happy Quilting, Friends!