Each Day a New Roadblock

Last year I drew Karen's name in the family drawing and decided to make her a lap quilt  We had three weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  I was able to select fabric, cut the squares and piece it together, take it to Betty to be quilted, and sew the binding on, all in good time.  I wasn't rushed.  The quilt was ready a few days before Christmas Eve when we exchange our presents.

This year I drew Sandy's name.  I thought it would be a good idea to do the same thing.  But I went with something a little different---a layer cake of Moda prints. I thought it would be easy to put together a quilt with those squares of fabrics and not have to stand and select coordinating pieces and figure out what to do.

Going to the Rossville Quilt Shop and selecting a layer cake was the easy part.   Actually, I found the perfect set of fabrics almost immediately after I walked in.  What happened later has been the problem.

What to do with the layer cake?  I couldn't find my books, so I resorted to the inertnet for ideas.  Most of those were very detailed, even the ones labeled 'easy' and I gave up quickly.  Gary finally found my books in a box in the garage, but even those were not very helpful.  What I settled on was a simple pattern with small squares and larger ones. 

Next was to check with Betty about quilting time.  I didn't think it would be a problem, but I asked her when I needed to take it to her so there would be enough time to be quilted in a timely manner so that I could put on the binding and do the hand-stitching.  After all between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year there were FOUR weeks, not three like last year.  Her response was that she couldn't do it at all because she was working alone now and had no time.  Darn.  On to Plan B---whatever that may be.

The only thing I could think of to do was a rag quilt but I wasn't sure if the cotton fabric would work with that.  I sent a note to Linda Doll and asked her opinion.  She was very positive so that was the direction I decided to go.

At Hobby Lobby Hilary and I looked at flannel (per Linda's suggestion to use instead of batting) and Hilary thought red would work fine.  After I bought three years of it, I decided that I would be too scared about washing that, especially with some of the lighter colored fabrics.  What if the red bled all over those light fabrics?  So we stopped at JoAnns after the cousins Santa picture and I selected a gray flannel for the batting part of the quilt.

Yesterday I spent most of the day cutting squares of fabric and flannel.  All set in stacks, ready to sew.

I also bought a walking foot to ensure that the fabric was moving through the pressure feed correctly. For some reason, the shank on the foot is too short and when I lower the presser foot, there is such a large gap that I can't use the walking foot.

That was the last straw.  It just seemed like everything i was trying to do, I couldn't because something was wrong, or didn't fit, or wasn't ready, or just couldn't be done. 

You know how it is said that the devil will throw wrenches into your day to keep you from reading the Bible or accomplishing what you need to do?  Well, I really thought that either the devil was doing a great job of keeping me from making this quilt or these were all signs from God that I really wasn't supposed to give Sandy a quilt for Christmas this year.

I decided to give it one more try.  I started to put together the little 'sandwiches' of top square, flannel, backing square.  Then I sewed two diagonals across the square.  It worked!  I have over half of the 84 small squares put together.  I need to finish those and do all 21 of the larger squares, then the little squares can be sew

I am sure there will be more roadblocks.  It wouldn't be surprising to me if I were still working on the quilt on the morning of Dec. 24.

In the midst of all of this today, my phone beeped and it was Sandy with a couple of suggestions for gifts for her.  I think I will go ahead and get those for her, just in case the quilt isn't finished.  One can't be too careful when it comes to Christmas gifts!