Finished Top

I finished off the Christmas quilt top yesterday. During the course of the week I trimmed all the HST to 2 1/8". They are the leftovers of several Christmas quilts I made a few years back - the corners that were cut off in the making of the snow ball blocks. As I usually do, I went ahead and sewed a second seam so they were all together and just needed pressing and trimming. Friday I started sewing the squares together. By that evening I had them all sewn into strips and then realized I needed a few more pinwheels. I cut some new ones and had to add them in randomly so they weren't obvious on the ends of several strips. Then I had them all laid out and discovered that half of the pinwheels had to spin in the opposite direction so I had to do some un-sewing and re-sewing while we watched a couple episodes of House that night. Saturday I got the strips together the right way and got them all on and decided to just add the two plain borders instead of adding another pieced border. I am pretty pleased with how it turned out - even after all the stumbling blocks. I also got the back for this done along with the back for another Christmas quilt (my border round robin top) and the back for the Recipe for Friendship top. I am going to have to get busy and get some quilting done soon!

This week was a busy one - we finally presented the Christmas program at our church school on Wednesday evening. It went well with only a few glitches but nothing goes smoothly when Mary and Joseph are in Kindergarten and you have 12 year olds that would rather be anywhere but there! The kids did a great job and I was so relieved to be done!

I think today I need to get some groceries and then I hope to get my Road to Jericho blocks put together into a couple more quilt tops. My friend has offered the use of her quilting machine so I might just go over this week and test it out on one of the tops I have finished. My husband really things I need to get my own long arm machine but I have no where to put it until we get rid of our piano.

Yesterday I got an email from Alaska Airlines about a Winter Clearance Sale so I checked it out and ended up getting our tickets to Denver for our niece's wedding in June (that is another quilt I need to get going on). Then I got to thinking about the quilt retreat over in Coeur d'Alene in February and bought a ticket to fly over instead of driving. Last February I wasn't sure I would be able to make it over due to snow in the mountains so I figured I would get a cheap ticket now and not have to think about that this year. Now I just have to rethink my packing so I can get everything into one checked bag and a carry-on! Which machine to bring?