Sisters Time

Facebook has been all astir about the Sarah  Morrell Quilt by Di Ford since March. The official kick off date is today with the center block. The plan is to do 3 blocks a month. The center is 20 inches and the other 60 blocks finish at 10 inches. This is not for the faint of heart.

Di Ford's Morrell Pattern

The pattern is now available at sentimental stitches. I have been drooling over this quilt ever since I saw Carole's post two years ago and ordered the pattern from Threadbear in Australia. It arrived in Feb 2014 and I proceeded to find fabrics to make it, someday. Because choosing fabrics is not my strength, I got 2 fat quarter bundles of French General from Craftsy for 40% off back in November and a few plaids from Threadbear on my Australia trip. And I bought the rest of the bolt from Pinegrove Quits in  Buffalo a year ago. You get the picture. I have been preparing for this for a while now. Can I resist the temptation to jump right in and start it? But when is the "official:" start of a new quilt?  Is it when I start cutting fabric or putting in the first stitch? I even located some Winterthur reproduction panels for the broderie perse. Today, as I was catching up on blog reading, I scrolled down through 4 years of Sue Garman posts to find her insights on her twirly balls technique, since that is the same pattern in the center block. Why should I hand piece a gzillion triangles when I can applique them?

Fabric for the Morell

In the meantime, it is the first of the month and that means the next free Ben Biggs BOM block. I downloaded it, saved it, printed it off and taped the 4 sheets together to prepare the layout.  But it did not seem to fit right. So I measured it. Now I cannot imagine how I could have made a mistake in printing it off. After all,  I am on my 4th printer since I started this in Jan 2014. Sigh. I went back through all the patterns I have printed off so far. All 19 of them. I only have about 10 machine applique down and only one with the corner buds because I could not decide what colour to make them. Thankfully. It appears that some of the patterns have been printed  "fit" and some "actual". This may not seem to be too big a deal. Except that had I stitched down all the corner buds to date, many would have been off set and that would have bothered me very  much. So, most of my patterns have been printed off to make 15 inch blocks instead of the 16 inches that I had hoped to make.

Ben Biggs # 19

I went back and re-printed the two that were too big. Then, I traced and cut out the shapes from the wash-away fuseable that I am using and put everything back into the box. After all, I am trying to only focus on completing the Criswell Quilt. I have not done any stitching for the past ten days since it has been family time here at the Farm. My three sisters and I went on an overnight shopping trip to Buffalo NY. We visited several quilt shops, shared a hotel room and did not kill each other. Actually, it was a lot of fun. And, I found a few fat quarters of Shot Cotton stripes for the 1718 Coverlet that released the next bunch of blocks. I have 16 done so far. Also, two months of Antique Wedding Sampler blocks were in my mailbox when we got home. 

Sisters

We ended up at The Quilting Bee in Fonthill where I had attended a lecture/demo by none other than Judi Madsen of green fairy quilts last week. I do not own a long arm quilting machine but thought I could learn some skills anyway. Back in Feb I had  booked a long arm for next week at a local quilt shop for two different days to machine quilt up two wedding quilts my daughter made last winter. This machine is a robot and will do a simple edge-to-edge design and I just have to babysit it, but that is okay for now.

Me and Judi Madsen

Now that I have turned the page on a very messy calendar to the new month of July, I see that I have lots to look forward to, so any quilting aspirations will have to wait until another month. My son and his family are moving next week so I will have the three little girl grandchildren here for the next two weekends and I am leading a small  ministry group for women here at the Farm on Tues nights in July. I have a meeting with my editor tomorrow to begin the first official edit of my book and I will be machine quilting the Bed of Blue Roses in sections. Good thing that most of the family house guests have returned home. The rain has finally ended and the sun is supposed to shine for 2 whole weeks.

Wonderful Family Blessings,
Chris