21 oct 10

The custom quilt was finished at last, and it seemed to get bigger the more we worked on it. It just swamped the whole table when we laid it out to trim and bind it. It was 104" x 109", and that's a lot of quilt. We are so lucky to have the tables and workspace to handle such a large item, it's so much easier to manage when the quilt is completely supported. I often help Mereth out with the really big custom quilts; I use the Statler to put in large motifs, or elements of the border, and Mereth freehands the spaces that are left. I get to play and experiment with the software, and it cuts down the amount of work that she has to do. In the huge corner triangles I put the feathered heart in the centre, and Mereth free-handed the feather sprays either side. She's pretty good at placing feathers to completely fill an area. The border was 14.5"wide, and I quilted lines 2" in on either side, then put that elaborate Interlaced Feather border in the remaining space. Those straight lines help define the border, and by making the space smaller (9") the border pattern can fill it entirely at a nice scale. If I'd done this pattern at 13" the individual feathers would have been too large. Straight lines are good value. We can't post pictures of the entire quilt, as it may end up entered in a show, but it did look wonderful, and worth all the effort. In the comments on my Stash Report, Kathi pointed out that my maths was up the creek, so I went back and looked at the spreadsheet; I wrote down the wrong number in my totals, so I've actually used 90.6 metres this year, bought 15.25, for a total of 75.35 metres used. I'm much closer to that first 100 metres used than I thought I was. It's HOT! That's only to be expected in summer, but expecting it doesn't make it more bearable. Still, there is a cool change predicted for tomorrow, and that does make the heat endurable. Only 24 more hours of this, then we can go outside without melting into a puddle. And I can play in my sewing room, and cook up some more of those blessed zucchini....