Almost Two & A Half bigger

Well, I picked my next round and it's the green I pulled out first. Now what? Measures 18 1/2" square now.

Haven't a clue where to go next, but I'm leaning toward red, but what pattern red? What do you think?

Progress Report: Greening of the Batt

I've designed and gotten the blocks for the yellow monochromatic challenge assembled.

I've quilted and made the binding for UFO # 6 - and hope by monday to have that done.  To get there I had to come up with batting for the 36" quilt and I did it by salvaging(aka as greening, lol) some batting from my batt bag.  I'll never understand why batting companies can't come up with more usable sizes of batting than what they sell(52 x 64 would be my preferred size - what's yours?), but then I guess it would be too hard to come up with all the sizes we need.  So I usually have strips of batting left over which I save.  I'm sure you must too cuz we're always saving scraps of fabric, aren't we?

So I went through the bag and pulled out batt strips of the same kind of batting and laid them out on the floor.  I had 3 strips and one small square of fabric which when laid out gave me a 38" overall square.  Taking these to my cutting table I added the square to one strip to make it long enough.  I learned this method from Marti Michell in her book:  Machine Quilting in Sections  It's a great book. So first I overlapped the two sections I wanted to join, and with my rotary cutter cut a wavy line in the center of the overlap.

Here's what they look like separated. 

Throw away the bits left over from the cut overlap and fit the two piece together again.

Now I take a strip of fusible interfacing and lay it over the cut.

Here I'm showing you the piece longer than the batting but that is just to show the interfacing.  When I iron it on, the top edge meets the top edge of the batting and the bottom edge is trimmed to the bottom edge, and one can hardly see it.  Now I have a piece long enough to use for my 38" batting square.  I attached the strips to the larger rectangle in the same way, and I had my batting for my ufo sandwich.

I know others just line up the two sections and zigzag them together, but the edges are never straight enough and I got bumps here and there and with hi loft batting the zigzag stitch tended to flatten the batting at the seam.  This way one can't even tell where the joints are. 

Progress Not

Well, it's a good thing I made myself that progress button or else I'd never have gotten the 15 minutes of quilt time in this week so far.  It's been one of those weeks.  A way too busy Monday, an all day trip on tuesday and a recovery day on wednesday plus a William day, a two board meeting day Thursday with one presentation  plus a grandmother of all headaches ( I think it's sinus related) - so I made myself between meetings sew for 15 minutes.  Didn't even get to post this thrusday. 

Life!

Hope yours is going smoother and mellower.  Off to take a tylenol and lay down for a few minutes.

Angie