it's all over but the shouting

All that is left to do on the auction quilt is to put on the binding and hanging sleeve. My goal this past week was to finish the inside quilting and get the borders sorted out and marked. As I was working (and I am a rather fast quilter) I saw that unless I did more work on the borders than just mark them, we would need more than one day to finish.

This is a big quilt and even with ten people sitting around the edge working, we would not be likely to finish. Meanwhile, my week is so crammed with stuff that I didn't want to even THINK about the possibility of one more days work.

Sunday I came home directly from a late choir practice and worked until after midnight. I had to get up at 3:30 am Monday for rice delivery and returned home about quarter to six. Instead of going back to bed as I often do, I parked myself at the hoop and worked straight through the day, only stopping for a quick dinner in the evening. It was about 12:30 am when I finally felt the remaining work was down to the realm of possibility. Then I packed it up and hit the sack.

I had worked sections, leaving areas between so that everyone would not be working in each others laps. We had a good mix of leftys and rightys so we could pretty well all work together. The first quilter to finish her area went around with a damp cloth removing whatever marking lines remained and removing basting threads. That had been one of my concerns so I was happy to see her doing a very careful check.
I wanted to see the total result and get a picture. Lighting was not great and the binding is yet to be added but you can get a fairly good idea of the results. At the end of the afternoon when we folded the quilt to travel to the next stage for binding, I was pleased to look over the backing and see that, although many hands had done the work, there was not a glaring difference between the stitching in rows done by different people.

Usually when doing a group project I like to choose a non-directional busy print to hide any irregularities. Thus, I was a bit concerned at how visible both front and back the quilting lines would be. I am, therefore, very pleased ... not only with the completion going according to the schedule ... but that many of my worries were for nothing.

NEXT WEEK ... turn the binding, add the sleeve, and remove pet hair! It will get hung in the Early Learning Center until the Gala. (Hopefully no earthquake this year). Tonight I will go to bed early ... or at least on time!