Progress

Slowly, but surely, I am getting the quilt for Son#3 and his beautiful bride-to-be quilted. Today is the last day of my holidays and while I'm pleased with the progress to date, I really wish I had another week or two to devote exclusively to quilting. Some cooler weather would be nice too. Not that I'm minding these extra-warm days but it does get a little hot sitting under a queen sized quilt that contains wool batting while you quilt.

I also have an itchy throat and a headache which has absolutely nothing to do with quilting or going back to work, except that I could feel a little miserable at work. Especially tomorrow which will be a training-type day and one that I'm not exactly looking forward to.

But I digress. So on to the progress on the quilt:




There are four large blue triangles in the corners. One has been quilted with feathers and echo quilting (what was I thinking?); another the feathers have been completed; and I'm currently working on the feathers on the third. The idea is to get the feathers all quilted which will see all the marking-out completed on the blue triangles, and then I can go back later to fill in with the echo quilting. And then (drum roll, please) on to the final border which will be a pleasure to quilt with the linking hearts. I wish I could just go straight to that border now, but I have a feeling that I'll regret it when I come back to the triangles and discover that I've got puckering all over the place. No, some things should be done in an orderly fashion, and this is one of them. But how I wish I'd settled on something plain and simple like cross-hatching. (The quilted border shown in the photo was done after its blue triangle was completed with echo quilting - it was probably a silly move but not as silly as doing the border before the triangle was fully quilted.)

I realise how inadequate my quilting is when I stumble across some very fine examples online. For anyone who loves to spend time at the computer looking at gorgeous quilts, check out this blog. (Yes, they are machine quilted, but still incredible.) If you haven't got hours to waste just looking, have a quick glance under "My Quilts" or "Customer Quilts". They are definitely worth a look - or two!

Progress has also been made on other fronts. This past weekend the invitations for the wedding were finally finished. The agony we all had to endure to get to this point, well, I just hope the guests appreciate them! Meanwhile the guys have their suits, the bride her dress, and the bridesmaids dresses are on order. DIL#1 expects her dress to arrive any day now while I continue to procrastinate about buying a Mother of the Groom (affectionately known as MOG) outfit. I still cannot understand why MOG outfits are modelled on eighteen-year-olds who wear a size 2! What MOG looks like that! Certainly not this one.

Son#4 continues to work on the website the bride and groom have set up, in between giving mine a whole new look. You can check it out here.

Soon, this will all be a distant memory. The flowers will wither, the invitations that we spent hours and hours and hours stressing over will be lost, the dresses and suits will be packed away, the blisters from too-tight-fitting shoes will have healed, the happy couple will begin the joyous task of setting up home together (and removing their belongings from the parental homes), and, hopefully, the quilt will be completed and discover its rightful place.

Comments

SchnauzerMom said…
The quilt is going to be beautiful! I understand about the dress. I wish they would use models that are normal sized. We could identify with them better. I hope you feel better soon.
Ohtawen said…
I too hope you will feel better soon, Jules. And I, for one, am in awe of your quilting skills. You may think your quilting is inadequate, but I fear you are being too harsh on yourself. The quilt looks wonderful, and I'm sure that the soon-to-be-wed couple will love it.