Challenge finished

Well here we are in the motel in West Union , ready for the retreat to start tomorrow and TaDa. Sewed the last of the pieced border on Grand Illusion tonight.

Hubby and I took a walk to see the retreat centre before supper. Standing in front of the building checking it out and some people started unloading a car. All of a sudden I heard a familiar voice. It was Bonnie ! Bringing supplies for the classes and meeting with her was Kellie, Jo's daughter.  

A happy meet and great. But even better, walked back to the motel and there checking in was ... Bonnie ! Such fun in small towns, everyone is right around the corner. 

And now to link up with JoJo

Week One of Challenge

The first week of the challenge is over and I succeeded in assembling the body of the quilt. Wasn’t sure I would make it, but powered through and finished the last row on the 20th. While I was busy patting myself on the back, it dawned on me that the pieced outer border wasn’t pieced. Oh, all the blocks were made, they just weren’t assembled. And where in all the chaos of my sewing mess was the inner border fabric?
 Finishing last row

                 My first attempt at doing the border was a fail. I didn’t bring the directions down from the sewing room to the living room where I was set up. Instead relied on my memory. Not completely my memory’s fault,  given the poor quality of the print out it’s a wonder I even figured it out at all.

How can you even tell what colours those are supposed to be? Well, I did figure it out and I ripped apart all of the wrong seams and re-sewed them.


And I found the missing fabric in a bin pulled to make another Celtic Solstice. Luckily I  hadn’t started cutting that.  Not sure if I’ll be able to get any more than the borders on. We have company coming tomorrow. They aren’t staying here, my MIL is putting them up at her house but we did agree to chauffer them around for the three days they’ll be here because they are travelling by bus and won’t have their own car with them. So sewing will be hit and miss depending on the activities of the day. Plus I have a work day Thursday.
Oh and somewhere in all this, we have to get packed to leave Monday morning to drive to Iowa. I should be pulling my hair out. Instead I have been pulling weeds in an effort to get the outside of the house looking presentable. Turns out they are much more satisfactory to pull, you get to feel virtuous about it instead of like a 3 year old having a tantrum.
But now to see what everyone else has been doing over at Jo's

Another Challenge ? Challenge Accepted !

Jo Kramer over at Jo’s Country Junction has issued a challenge. To Wit: finish a project before the Retreat she is hosting on July 29th.  Since I am signed up for this retreat it seemed perfectly logical to accept this challenge. I also wanted to bring something finished along with me for the show and tell preferably the last mystery quilt, Grand Illusion. When she threw down the gauntlet (can’t think of a suitable quilting substitute for gauntlet, thimble?) , my Grand Illusion was neatly stacked in bins all ready for the final assembly. Why was it still waiting? Well when the final clue was released I set them all aside to focus on the wedding quilt I was making as that had a higher priority and actual deadline. Since Monday I have webbed the columns together.

As is fairly obvious, I ran out of room to work on it up in my sewing room. So today I’ve moved it downstairs to the living room and set up my modern Janome to finish sewing the rows together. The Janome has a setting for  a 1/4” seam but I have rarely used it for  piecing. It’s primary job is to do the quilting and binding. So I double checked the setting with my little guide and even put down a piece of masking tape to keep the edge in the right place. Now to get the pedal to the floor and get’er done.

Thanks for the kick in the pants to get me started Jo. Linking up with the girls over at Jo's to see what everyone else has chosen to work on.

A Belated Canada Day

A happy Canada Day belatedly.

To celebrate we went sailing. And no sewing was done. I did take a busy bag of hand sewing along, however it was too choppy to get it out. I probably would have been stabbing myself repeatedly if I'd tried. It was overcast while we were at the dock getting ready to go and the motor was uncooperative.

A change of spark-plugs soon fixed that and off we went.

. And sure enough,  out on the water we found some sunshine.  Motored for quite a while because hubby wanted to burn off fuel. He had just refilled the fuel tank and thought he'd overfilled it. But once we had the fuel gauge down to a reasonable level, up came the sail.