Burgundy and old gold customer quilt

Last week was a rather confusing one for me.  On Tuesdays, I only work until 10 am and this is fairly routine but then Wednesday, being our national voting day, was a public holiday.  So by not being at the office long enough on a Tuesday, I usually know I’d catch up whatever didn’t get done that day on Wednesday.  Then Wednesday disappeared, so I had to make sure everything and a little more got done in the short space of time at the office.  

To top it all the builders, appointed by our insurance, phoned to say they are coming to fix the ceiling – after a burst geyser – on Thursday at 9 am.  MIL had to be taken to the hospital to get her monthly prescription, so had to fetch her at 06:30, drop her off at the hospital, drive to work to get there at 06:45, tried to do as much as possible before having to return home to await the builders at 08:30.  Fetched MIL later that day, took her to lunch and then finally back home to make yet another trip to the post office during the afternoon.

I haven’t done a quilt for a customer since February and it was refreshing to work on something that I didn’t, by the time I got to quilt it, knew every mistake, flaw and colour.  When I do a quilt for a customer I anyway don’t inspect it to pass judgement, I only see shapes and then this little old head starts working overtime to find just the right motif for the right shape.

The first step is to take a picture of the top, then layer a plastic sheet on top of the picture and then playtime starts.

While working on finding something to do in the largest blocks I noticed that I will get this secondary circle design and my mind was made up.  This would be the way to go and the rest should be planned around it.

The nice part of the disruptive week was that I got to be at home more so had a little extra time to work on this quilt.

Early morning, before work one day, I could zip the quilt off to turn it.  I don’t have one of these massive machines with a huge throat space.  When I get a quilt with big blocks (over 8 inches) I prefer to do half a block at a time and sometimes, especially when I did a directional design on a border, it is just so much easier to take the quilt off, turn it and do the other halves or sides.  This is the quilt halfway done, ready to be turned.

Then I got distracted….. I ordered my second panel from Honest Fabric and just over 2 months later, I received it!  Just look at this!  Designed by Judi Madsen called Celebrate and this colour is Summer White. This was what came from my trip to the post office on Thursday last week.

Once a quilt is turned it is downhill all the way as most of the first stitching stabilised the quilt and one has to worry less about puckers in the backing of having the quilt kept taught with the side clamps.

So 215 920 stitches later I could phone the customer to fetch her quilt.

At least I ended the week with a divine lunch booking at a restaurant organised by our kids.