I’m still here!  My friend asked if I could make a larger sized quilt so I’m knee deep in block 20-something of 121 total blocks.  It may be toward the end of the summer before I’m finished with this quilt.  I don’t think she has a timeline for receiving it though; if she has, she’s been sweet enough not to mention it to me.  As a result, I haven’t had much news to blog about.

I did find a bit of a shortcut for the pattern; I’ve been laying all the squares out in the color combination they need to go.  I finally got the bright idea to stack 3 or 4 of the same color combos up so that I complete multiple blocks at the same time.  It mentally seems faster.

I have a super quick quilt on the longarm in the meantime when I need a break from the sewing machine.  I decided to try Hobbs’ Tuscany silk batting and wow is this the most luxurious feeling batting ever!  I am totally in love with it.  It’s more expensive than a cotton or cotton blend but if you are looking for something that has a lot of loft but still provides some warmth, this is definitely it.  I can see I’m going to use this a lot more going forward because it really makes the quilting pop. That last picture had a row of basting across it, which is the off-kilter horizontal line at the top; ignore that!

I needed to make some markings on the fabric for this one and these are really large blocks so I was having issues marking on the ruler base because I didn’t have enough room to mark to the back – the machine head has the ruler base connected to it and it was in the way.  Someone suggested the idea of propping an ironing board underneath it to give me a large, flat area to mark the quilt on.  What a great idea!!!

I lowered it enough to get it under the bottom layer of fabric (the machine is off to the right) and then I prop it up high enough so that the ironing board is level with the fabric.  It’s a cheap, perfect way to mark large sections of a quilt without having to do it prior to loading the quilt.