Slow Sunday

Here we are again at the beginning of a new week and still, the task of hand-quilting is taking center stage.

On Friday, I attended our Frankfort Girls sew-along over at Sheryll's house. What a dreary day it was, but the warmth and coziness of freshly-made coffee cake and coffee combined with dear friends and stitching made it just as pleasant as ever.

I brought out a project that I "sandwiched" for History Day. I did quite a bit on it that day, and worked again on it the last time we girls met. So, basically, every two weeks, this quilt gets about 3 hours of stitching. Since it is a rather a small quilt, I won't need many more days to finish it. The backing is pieced with two pretty fabrics the details of which you can read about here.

I need to give this quilt a name. Generally, I refer to it as the paper-pieced quilt. I went back through old blogposts and found 3 occasions where I either mentioned or worked on it. Just for the sake of pulling related material together, I will link them here, and you can enjoy if you like. (2012 mention; 2013 mention; 2014 mention.) This quilt truly has been a multi-year project.

My other hand-quilting project, of course, is Erin's Diamonds. It takes up most of the dining area, as the picture above illustrates; I so want to get this monster frame out of the way before DH is ready to come this way with his painting. I estimate that I am 25% finished with it. Most days I do get at least an hour of stitching in, oftentimes more. The picture above is from the very beginning, but I can use it to explain my process thus far: I started on the blue side - those tips of yellow are the bottom border. I quilted up to almost the light purple row. Then we lifted the frame and turned it 180-degrees, so now the orange-y pink-red rows are nearly finished. Again, I can reach to almost the light purple row. I hope that by day's end I will be ready to roll up the finished side and begin new rows (and maybe zip across that unquilted purple row, too).

While I quilt like crazy on my diamonds quilt, a close friend is just getting started. Frienzie Kay is the original fan of Kaffe Fassett fabrics; she introduced these fabrics to me way back about 10 years ago. Anyway, she is in the cutting phase of making her own diamond quilt. Because she has asked me several questions about how I cut this quilt out, I went back through the archives and uncovered a post that explained those details. If you were ever thinking you couldn't do a quilt with so many bias edges, think again. This quilt was a dream to cut and sew. Click back on the link to read all about it.

About the painting job that DH is progressing on. The formal dining room is nearly completed. I know he will be very happy to have one room done - as he said the other day "I need closure!" He's not the only one, either! *wink*

Next he will move to the front room. I will do all I can to return the dining room to "normal" and still keep up the pace on Erin's Diamonds, because when the front room is finished, he will have a small, easy entry hall and then - oh boy - the main living area will become his final area. I need to be out of his way, for sure. Nothing like a little pressure, is there??

I hope you have a pleasant Sunday. Maybe some slow stitching is in your plans? I am linking to Slow Sunday Stitching; hope you go there and have a look around.

Happy Quilting, Friends!