Asher's quilt

it seems I've created my own sort of "worshiping at the church of the last minute" -- but in my defense, it's not entirely my fault

about 10 days ago I set myself a deadline to have this quilt top finished and pinned with the batting and back so I can take it with me to my daughter's when we leave tomorrow morning

I did not expect the adventure of redesigning the "map" -- or that even after I did that there would be some additional design "tweeking" before the top was actually all stitched together

but I accomplished that yesterday afternoon (in the picture here it's laying on the floor of my studio)

after that was accomplished, we moved on to the "sandwiching"

the batt I bought for this quilt is 50% cotton and 50% bamboo -- thin enough that I'll be able to quilt through it, but it will be warm and durable (keep in mind I make this kind of quilt with the idea that it be used and washed over and over)

I've never worked with this kind of batting, and the "cling" factor was a huge surprise -- usually this stage of the quilt building is something I can handle by myself on the table, but not this one -- there was a considerable amount of smoothing and lifting and re-smoothing -- I rolled the top wrong side out around one of those foam pool toys so I could slowly roll it out over the batting

the up side of all that struggle is that it's not going to slip around while I'm quilting it! so I did the pinning a little further apart than I usually do

today I'll be taking it to my local fabric store to pick the thread I'll quilt with -- the blues I have don't match the back and the yellow I have doesn't match the front -- one or the other has to work, so off we'll go

but it's all ready to quilt now

after all that quilt struggle, I needed something more mindless

behold, the final pair of mittens all complete

and I started the first of the hats last night too

looking good


time to get to the laundry and packing