November quilt 2 {flying south}

I promise I've been doing other things besides me sewing. A lot of it is meetings and who wants to see pictures of those? We did do some fun things, and I just downloaded some other pictures to prove it. But I'm not posting those today. Today you get to see the pictures that almost didn't happen.

I knew I was close to finishing the quilt as the week went on, but as I heard the weather forecast for "winter weather," I kicked it into high gear. Sleeting, snowing, bitterly cold weather means quilt pictures inside and I don't like those. The quilt top was fast. The quilt back was fast once I decided what to do. The quilting--not so fast. I finally had my son stand behind me yesterday after school while I was quilting to watch the machine to see why the thread kept breaking. We decided it was hitting too many seam junctions. Then I asked him to help me wrestle the quilt as I maneuvered around. That helped too. Later, after church and after they both went to bed I worked on the binding and ended up having to take the bobbin mechanism apart to remove all the lint that was knocking it out of whack. And I had to replace another broken needle, which broke on an out of alignment walking foot. Luckily I had another walking foot my old sewing machine. I finished it just in time for work this morning and jammed it in the washing machine.

At lunch I came home and put it in the dryer. It was dry by the time I left, but I did not have time to take pictures. And the temperature was dropping. I could still wear my sandals though. I worked at the office for an hour then headed to the school to do my work there and get the kids. We stopped at the house for the quilt, the camera, and real shoes for me.

I wanted to try pictures at this bridge. We played "wait until the wind stops blowing and then take the picture really fast."

My helper, trying to keep the quilt from blowing to Texas. That was all the cold we could stand so we went to eat ice cream. Really.

Here are a few flatter views I took after we got home. The pattern is called Open Season and came from Carrie Nelson's Schnibbles Times Two. The back is my own design, using some of the large pieces of fabric I had along with a bit of the leftovers from the front. The fabrics are some of my favorites. I had pulled together about 20 fabrics to make a pinwheel type quilt, but then decided I didn't like it so much. I wasn't sure about the pattern, and the fabrics were a little too spring-ish with too many pastels. That fabric was on my desk, along with some I had just received in the mail from the Stash Stack Club. Then I decided to just pull a "difficult" fabric out of the bin to see if I could make a quilt with it. It was the brown floral--which had some of the pinks and oranges and citrons piled up allover my desk. I added more from my stash, and found I could finally use some of my favorites and all in one quilt.

It is done with only one minor post-washing repair job, and now it is cold enough to add it as another layer on my bed.