Road Trip!

We are on our way to visit our daughter in Texas, and drove from Michigan to St. Louis, MO yesterday.  We are staying for one day with my best friend, who was my neighbor many years ago when I lived here too.  I am so excited to sew today with my best friend Dee Halagera.  

She and I talk almost daily on the phone, and our quilting styles are so different.  I blogged about a day with her before (Here)  Since we are traveling by car, I could bring some of my current unfinished projects to show her, and last night we looked at all of our works in progress.  

Today we are working on a baby quilt we worked on two years ago together. It was one of Dee's projects that we now refer to as "the baby quilt from hell", but are determined to get it done!   Dee picked out the fabrics, and cut the circles, and two years ago we laid them out on the white background and she machine sewed the circles down.  Adorable, right?

Problem #1:  The machine quilter (some nameless person who learned from this quilt too) machine quilted all the background before she worked on the circles, and the results were lovely swirls in the background and lots of puffy little mountains where the circles had previously been laying there flat.  So for a long time this project was wadded into a ball in Dee's closet. Ruined.

Rescue #1:  Judy came to town (picture me on my white horse, galloping along) and said, "Dee, I can fix this!"  I took it home, and picked out all the machine sewing around the circles, took them off, and cut away the white background "mountains" under them.  I hand appliqued the circles back on the top.  Yeah!  Here's a picture of the white fabric bunched up problem - a circle that was just removed.  The back of the quilt was just fine - just the white front fabric bunched up.  




Problem #2:  How would I quilt the circles?  I am not good at free motion quilting, and so I dissected the circles with chalk lines like a knife through a round pie, and machine sewed them flat.  But they looked like little pies to me - not what we wanted.  Dee's original intention was to quilt them with a spiral line radiating out from the center of the circles, so I took this stitching out and left the project in a ball on the floor of my closet.  I know, I know, I should have left the pies.

Rescue #2:  We are together today, and we are at the point where we don't care how the radiating spirals on the circles will look.  We don't care if it doesn't have completely flat circles.  We will forge on ahead (picture both of us on beautiful white horses, charging at this little helpless baby quilt, determined to finish it)  

We will be spiraling on today on these circles, cutting striped binding on the bias to show it off, and getting this baby quilt into a finished stage!

Here's a mock up picture of the binding:

As you read this blog post, say a little prayer for us as we conquer this mountain.....actually many little baby mountains of polka dots.  We will make this work!

And if anyone who happens to get this baby quilt as a gift, and would somehow read this blog post, remember it was made with lots of laughter and love......and lots of perseverance.  It is definitely a learning experience, which is always good.

I'm linking up with Design Wall Mondays at Judy Laquidara's to see what others have on their design walls.  (Here)


Also, I'm up to date with Bonnie Hunter's Grand Illusion quilt, but it sure is a mystery how this is all going to go together into one quilt. Here's my pieces that are Clue #5:

The mystery will be solved soon, so I am trying to be patient.  Here's the link to Bonnie's blog linkup today.  (Here)