Braving the Weather

As I was folding laundry yesterday morning I saw headlights headed up our driveway. I knew the dry wall guy had a dentist appointment and couldn't believe it was him already (it was 9:45-ish). It was a customer coming to fetch one of her quilts. And she brought friends. 

What a delightful time we had and these three were an absolute hoot! Not only did Bernadette pick up her quilt, but she dropped off three more. And Pam dropped off a t-shirt top for me to do and Maggie gave me two as well. Six in all added to the queue. 

Drywall guy is here already this morning and I'm going to continue on with Joyces quilt on Bernie today. Joan is supposed to come later this afternoon to pick up her quilt I did yesterday. More on that in a bit, and here's what's on DW for the next few days...

A Kaffe piece to customize

Okay, so here's the deal. Please, please, please give me enough backing on your quilts. Joans quilt was at a 1" deficit. I had to watch both sides very carefully to not get the backing flipped under the batt/top. I had to make sure it was falling square and not shifting. There was NOTHING to clamp to on the sides, meaning I was the "clamps" and had to hold it while it was stitching out. Strike one.

The backing was minky (fireside) and is very slippery with the batting on top of it (the backside is a very tightly woven poly) so the quilt/batt kept shifting with each advance. Some of the quilting is off a bit because of this and because I couldn't baste down correctly on the sides to stabilize it due to the backing shortage. Strike two.

The end of the quilt is even more unstable (more so without those side clamps) so I used large "C" clamps to hold everything while the quilt was stitching out. Apparently these stretched the fireside backing enough that when I released it from the frame, it actually bounced back a bit and it is now bunched at the end. Strike three.

Joan wanted this quilted pretty tight. The quilt will "suck in on itself" the tighter you quilt the top. I knew the backing was already at a deficit and so despite what I was told to do, couldn't actually get it as tight as she wanted because of the already negative backing situation. By the time I reached the end, the quilt had sucked in about another inch. Yep. Now we're even shorter on the whole thing. Strike four. 

Oh wait, there's only three strikes so now I'm going to have to explain all this to her when she comes later today to get this mess. I may not even charge her. It's a train wreck and I'm not proud of what we got off the frame yesterday. And I don't think she'll be very happy either. Lesson learned. Minky requires that four inches on each side!!!

After dealing with Joans quilt, and while frame ironing Sandys piece on DW, and after shutting down Bernie, I put these together...

The border to the whole quilt

There's a hand embroidered center piece that goes in here, but until I get the top and bottom "border" put on, I'm not going to trim it just in case it's a different measurement.