Leaf and Star Quilt Update - Photos

I reached a new milestone this week on the quilt.  I finally made the quilt sandwich by adding the backing and batting and pinning the quilt together in preparation for quilting.  I have been procrastinating on this for a while.  I find pinning the quilt to be the least enjoyable part of the process of making a quilt.  It is a lot of work. 

This quilt is a large quilt; 72 x 72 inches (182.88 x 182.88 cm).  It was made for a queen or king size bed.  When I laid the quilt on the bed, I was not able to reach the center of the bed to start pinning the quilt.  (I am fairly short.)  I had to lay the quilt out on the floor in order to work on it.  This meant that I was crawling around on my hands and knees.  It took me four hours and fifteen minutes to pin the quilt.  I worked straight through.  Thank goodness I had some knee pads (from when we laid the flooring in the den).  I don't think my knees would have held out otherwise.  If anyone has any work to do on the floor I heartily recommend using knee pads. 

The quilt took up most of the available floor space.  I did not have a lot of room to work.  When I was not crawling on hands and knees, I was sitting in uncomfortable positions.  By the time I was finished my muscles were stiff and sore.   I also had my Tai Chi class that night.  It was a challenge to make it through the class without giving in to the discomfort.  

Now that the quilt is all together, it is time to begin the quilting. I would like to get it completed soon because warm weather is coming.  It can become uncomfortable to quilt when it is hot outside.  This week we have already had days where the temperature reached 80 degrees Fahrenheit (26.67 C.).  Last night a weather front came through and the temperature is only supposed to be about 53 degrees (11.67 C.).  I may have a few weeks of cool quilting weather, but Spring is on its way and Summer weather is not far behind.

This week I finally feel as if I am catching up a bit.  Getting this quilt ready has been a big sticking point.  I could not move on till it was done.  I have also caught up on getting some things ready so I would have hand work to do for my Thursday quilting group and for a wall hanging that I am working on with a friend.  I will be showing pictures of the wall hanging in a future blog post.  I am still working on stuffing those pin cushions.  I had no idea that they would take that long to stuff.  At least I am getting to a point of almost ready to move to the next phase on them.  Now that I have those projects set, I can start working on my Flamenco Dancer doll in the coming week.  It feels good to get to a point where I am making progress.

Check back Sunday for the next blog post.