**HUGE SIGH**  I’m finished!  Well, finished with the sandwiching of the quilt, which I thought would never end.  I honestly didn’t think I’d finish today, but it helped that my husband was working in my office, wiring some cables from one room to the next, so it made sense to stay in my office and work on the quilt to be with him.  I couldn’t wait to be done.  My neck is killing me and I have a headache now, but it’s done.  Yay!

I’ve got the binding all cut and pressed (per the directions).  It’s all sewn together and ready to go.  I think I’ll have time to sew one side to the quilt yet tonight and then the last part will be the other side of the binding, which is done by hand (dreading this part).  It’ll be so nice when it’s done.  I’m blown away with how quickly it’s come together.

In this last picture (below), I have my lamp turned on (on the corner of my project table).  I use this for any and all projects that I do at my project table.  It’s amazing!  It adds light right where you need it and it’s a “daylight” light, so it makes color look more real and vibrant (if that even makes sense).  In case you’re interested, the light is called, “Ott-Light Task Light”.  Most craft stores carry them and they’re priceless (in my opinion).  I got it for Christmas this past year from my parents (thanks Mom and Dad!) and I don’t know how I’ve lived without it for so long.

This is taking way longer than I would have thought and I’m ready to be done with it already.  I decided to try my hand at free-motion quilting (where there is no rhyme or reason to your design).  This is my first time changing the needle (to have a new, sharper one ready), the first time changing “feet” on my sewing machine, along with many settings.

I will say that it’s a lot sloppier than I had hoped, but still looks pretty decent.  I wish I had more of a consistent design to it, but what I’m doing certainly makes it a “one-of-a-kind” piece.

I’m only 1/3 of the way done with “sandwiching” the three pieces together.  I’ll work on it some more today, but definitely will not be finishing the quilt this weekend as planned.  In the past, it’s only taken a couple of hours to sandwich the pieces together, although in the past, I’ve only stitched straight lines, which made it very quick and easy.  This quilt will definitely look more “quilted”.

I hope to finish in the next few days and then move on to the binding (the last step).  This takes me a couple days to do (as it’s not fun and hurts my fingers when I do the hand-stitching part).  I’ll continue to keep you posted.

Today I worked on the back side of the quilt (way faster than the front, as you can see it’s not as intricate).  It took some time cutting the strip pieces to the correct size, then realizing that I didn’t cut enough.  *sigh*  Add two more mistakes to the quilt, equaling 10 total (not new ones, but the wrong cut I made from the day before on a piece of fabric had to be used again today).  Not the end of the world.

I still have to “sandwich” the quilt together (sewing all three pieces (front, batting, and back) together).  Then the last thing will be the binding, which is mostly done by hand, so takes a lot longer to do and your fingers hurt, so I’m guessing I’ll do that part within a few days (not all in one).

It’s all coming together pretty quickly and starting to take shape.  I can’t wait to see the end result.  More pictures to come.

Wow!  I ran all of my errands today AND managed to finish the quilt top.  I can’t believe I was able to finish it today.  I’m definitely at a stopping point for tonight.  I hope to have time tomorrow to work on the back of the quilt (something new I’ve never done before for the backing…not exactly fancy, just more work than usual).  I’ll definitely continue to take pictures along the way.  At this rate, I hope to be done with it by the end of the weekend (depending on if we decide to do something or not).

So, the day started with me thinking I’d piece together the rows and then stop.  I picked up the first few pieces (walking in and out of the other room where I had everything laid out in the right order).  As I go into the other room to get another piece to add to what I had already sewn, I found Oscar laying smack in the middle of my pieces.  I wanted to shoo him off, but figured all the pieces would fly everywhere if he leaped off them fast enough.  I just let him lay there, but he wasn’t there for long (as he was frustrated with me going in and out of the room so often…poor guy couldn’t sleep).

I ended up getting all the rows and the sashing in between the rows sewn together before I ran my errands this afternoon.  After dinner, I started working on the quilt again and had hoped to finish the top yet tonight.  Yay…I reached my goal!  I’m very pleased with it (mistakes and all…have you noticed them yet?  There’s 8 total…told you I messed up pretty big.).  I am definitely starting to like the colors and patterns together and can’t wait to see the finished quilt.  Stay tuned for more pictures.

Yesterday I ironed the fabric and cut off the salvage edges.  My afternoon started with the ironing for this project and before I even got started, I burned the inside of my arm, right near the crease for where it bends at the elbow.  I have no clue how I burned myself there or that it was even possible.  It happened so fast.  What a way to start the afternoon out and this (what was suppose to be fun) project.  *sigh*

I thought I’d stop there, but the bug hit me, so I continued on (the iron burn didn’t defeat me).  I went ahead and cut all of the fabric pieces to size, so that everything was ready to go.  I didn’t think I was rushing, but made two very costly wrong cuts in the fabric.  I’m determined not to go back to the fabric store and spend more money to replace a stupid mistake I made, so I sewed pieces back together to make the proper lengths.  It will be noticeable in several areas of the quilt, but I’m hoping no one will really notice it unless I show them.  We’ll see.  I’m trying not to stress about it (my perfect baby quilt is not perfect anymore…*shakes head in disgust*).

I thought I’d stop there, but didn’t (not letting the wrong cuts defeat me either).  I went ahead and sewed all of the quilt squares together, ironed them, and laid them out in the other room with my next step in place (that I hope to have time to work on today).

My sewing machine was not cooperating well, so when my husband came home, he came home to a very irate pregnant wife who was extremely exhausted from trying time and time again to figure out what was wrong with the stupid sewing machine.  It took me so many tries (taking the stupid thing apart and putting it back together each time), but I finally (think) I got it all figured out and we’re good to go again.  We’ll see how today goes (fingers crossed).

I’ll sew the little blue pieces in between the quilt squares to the squares and make five rows.  Then I’ll sew the strips (not shown) in between each row, then add the borders. At that point, the top part of the quilt will be finished.  Ideally I’d like to do that today and then come to a stopping point, but I have several errands to run today and groceries is one of them (we’re in desperate need of food in this house). I’ll continue to post pictures of the quilt as I work on it, so check back.

Yesterday, I stopped by the fabric store.  I walked in so excited to get started and quickly felt defeated.  I walked around the store (very slowly) four times before I had someone ask me if I needed help.  I luckily got a wonderful lady who was with me and helped me make my final choices.

I was at the store for over 2 hours and with her for well over an hour.  Poor lady!  I showed her a couple of thoughts I had and we just couldn’t find things to coordinate well (at least I wasn’t the only one having that problem….she couldn’t find things either).  We finally came up with some blues and browns (after me thinking if I should go in a different direction and do the blue, gray, and red option).

I’m not totally thrilled with my fabric choices.  I had hoped there would be more Amy Butler type fabrics (fun edgy prints) that were in the blue and brown family.  I had no such luck (and you wouldn’t believe how many fabrics they have in store).  *sigh*  After seeing the fabrics together, I’m feeling a bit better about them.  They’re still not what I originally had in mind, but I’m thinking they’ll look nice together with the pattern I’ve chosen for the quilt.

I washed the fabric yesterday and hope to take some time today to get the fabric ironed and some pieces cut.  I’ll make sure to take some pictures along the way and post my progress on this quilt.  I can’t wait to see it finished (and certainly hope I’m not disappointed).