…diving deep, WIP style…

With the covid finishpalooza continuing apace, I’m coming across a problem I never thought I would – I’m running out of projects to work on. Currently, I have three in progress. I have my mandala blanket I started at the end of the 100 days project that I work on of an evening. I have my stitchery that I’m working on at the school table. Aside from that, there isn’t a lot going on.

Last week, we took a break from school work, and the children and I headed off for a few days for a change of scenery. When we got home, I should’ve been prepping my renewal paperwork. I had good intentions, I swear I did, but I sort of got distracted with some crafting. I don’t often get a chance to claim the table for bigger projects that can take all day to work on, but I can in school break. First on my list was a pair of shorts, and then, I went for a deep dive in the WIP box, all the way back to 2012.

The last time I touched my 2012 Vintage Modern block-of-the-month quilt was back in 2017, when I took it to quilt camp to unpick my first attempt at quilting. It’s been back and forth to camp a few times since, but nothing has been done on it. I need one more quilt finish for my 2020 challenge, and to be honest, I’m growing tired of seeing this quilt staring me in the face from it’s crate every time I walk into our storage container. It was a no-brainer, really, that this should be the next project to jump into the finished pile.

It is an interesting exercise, trying to baste a large quilt in a small house. My first problem, before that though, was I’d put my basting spray in a Very Safe Place after basting the triangle quilt a couple of months back. Off to town we went, and a new bottle of spray in hand, I started rearranging the living space to fit my quilt. With all the furniture pushed back, I could just fit in the backing, with an inch or so to spare.

My next decision was exactly how to quilt it. That felt a bit hard, so I kicked off with just some simple ditch quilting around all 12 blocks and the borders. Once I had that done, it was time to get stuck into the fancier stuff. I decided on a stars and stipple pattern for the inner square, and feathers for the outer borders.

I am so chuffed with how it is coming together. I think the bobbin wasn’t in quite right for the first section I quilted, as it has some weird pulling that resolved itself after a bobbin change. That section will need unpicking and redoing – after waiting 8 years for a finish there’s no point rushing to the end and being unhappy with the result. The borders, I think I will quilt more geometrically – a fan shape in the aqua triangles, I’ve decided, though I’m not sure about the red borders.

I’m hoping to get the quilting finished in the next week or so, and the binding attached by the end of the month, leaving me all of December to work my way around the handstitching. That’s the plan, and I am determined to not let this quilt ring in another year unfinished!