Quilting done, one backing made

We had a leisurely breakfast on Sunday (5/15), then Michael and Cookie went for a walk, and I headed downstairs. I have to tell you a story about the blue quilt. So, several years ago I ordered some rainbow fat quarters on-line….and they sent me charm squares (5 inch squares). I thought they had worded what they were selling poorly, and that I had mistakenly assumed I was getting fat quarters, when what I really ordered were the charm squares. BG came for a visit shortly after this happened, and I was complaining to her about the poor wording of the ad and showed it to her. She said that she thought it WAS fat quarters, and that the company had sent me the wrong thing. So, I contacted them, and BG was right….but the company told me to just keep the charm squares….so then I had to figure out a pattern to use them in, and eventually created a simple quilt I just called ‘’charms on point’’. To get this quilt to the size I wanted, I had to put a border on it….and as I discussed with several people at quilting last week….I hate doing borders (and apparently I’m not alone!) I would much rather make additional blocks than make borders. Anyway, when I did the chandelier quilts (which are also squares on point), I cut those at 5-1/2’’ and it worked out perfectly for the size I wanted for the quilt…with no borders! So now I come to the blue quilt:

which again is squares on point….and I had planned to do 5-1/2’’ squares, since I already have a pattern written that tells me how many of those I need to make to hit the size I want. However, if you look at the white squares with the skinny blue stripe, I would have had to cut my white fabric at 2-3/4’’ wide…and the chances of me doing that consistently, without making a mistake, are NIL! I was explaining this at Thursday quilting, and everyone there agreed as well….2-3/4’’ is just not that standard of a cut in strip quilting. So instead, I bumped the white up to 3 inches, which means that I will now have 3 patterns for squares on point….5 inch squares….5-1/2 inch squares…and 6 inch squares!!! It remains to be seen whether or not I will need a border on the blue quilt…I changed the number of columns and rows on it. I’m thinking I will want a small white border and then to bind it in the dark blue….not to hit a certain size…just for the look of the quilt.

Anyway, I fired up XENA to continue quilting the last men’s quilt…and worked on my setting triangles for the blue quilt:

Thanks thanks to eagle-eyed Mary Jo for catching a placement error, now I won't have to rip after sewing things together....can you spot the error that she found?

I was done with the quilting by mid-afternoon…..

but my goodness did I luck out….the backing was barely big enough (less than an inch!!!):

I really lucked out!!!

Once the setting triangles were done, I had another stern talk with myself and managed to put together a backing for one of the chandelier quilts:

The rest of the day was spent starting to clean up the last quilted quilt:

We had spaghetti & meatballs for dinner and I was so tired I didn’t even knit while we watched TV. At 10:30, Michael headed outside to check the sky for the lunar eclipse….unfortunately it was cloudy…he kept checking every 15 minutes and finally at 11:15 the moon was in a patch of clear sky. We got out our chairs and sat in the driveway and watched it disappear…and a tinge of red appear near the bottom of the shadow. Although he kept checking until mid-night, the sky never did clear enough for us to see the re-emergence, so we finally headed to bed.

*** Some days…my energy level is equal to that of a sloth on Xanax. ***