Over the Tops - First Update

These last couple of weeks have been much busier than I ever expected, but in spite of that I've been able to make some progress on a couple of my challenge projects.


To complicate things, I badly cut my left index finger on Saturday, while preparing for our Football and Food Fest day yesterday, rendering it pretty much useless for at least the next several days. Typing while watching the keys and substituting fingers REALLY slows one down when one is used to not looking at all! This was supposed to be a decidedly less busy week, but I'm now babysitting 3 afternoons and Rachel's algebra is taking us a couple of hours a day...add that to a gimpy left hand and I won't get nearly as much accomplished as I'd hoped, then again, just not having to leave the house except to grocery shop sounds pretty darn good in and of itself.


While the Purple Paper Pieced quilt isn't on my challenge list, I still want it to be finished before putting anything else in the hoop. I was on a roll until I hit the outer border, which is more tedious to quilt than I expected. I'm still going to quilt at least a little bit on it each day and will get back to it full force when my finger is more useful, for now having to do everything altering the position of my hand is really slowing me down.


I've spent a fair amount of time on two of the projects. The first is the Posy and Celtic quilt (which probably needs a new name, while the applique is done in the way celtic applique is done, it turns out that none of the designs are really celtic style designs.) I finished sewing the second side down to all the pieces in the sashing. I was still stumped as to what to do in the outer border.


I thought about and discarded several ideas. I felt like it needed some kind of braid in that outer border to "complete" the sashing braid. Just the braid didn't seem like enough, though. I finally drew out a design and laid it along the edge.

I had planned to put the braid in closer and then a vine and posy border outside of that. When I first planned this quilt, the outer border was to be a vine and posy border, but as I worked on the quilt, that idea changed. I laid this paper pattern up next to the top and it didn't seem to work. The braid alone wasn't enough, the vine seemed superfluous when on the outside.

In moving the top and border pattern around, one time it ended up with the vine border inside and the braid border outside. That was it! It looked complete with that braided border on the outside. I added the border strip and marked it all, and started to sew on the vine.

The other project that got a lot of attention is Radiating Rainbows. I cut 13 sets of blocks, and set up my applique box with all the thread needed, spare needles and a pair of scissors. If I need a takealong project, I can just pick up this box and go.

Each baggie has all the pieces to make 4 blocks as there are 4 of each color combination. This should keep me going for a while and once they are done I can lay them out and see what combinations are needed to balance out the colors in this top. Here is a finished block.

And of course, no post is complete without a Ruthie picture. Drawing is SO exhausting!

So now it's time to get to the quilting. Laundry is going, algebra is done, a bit of kitchen cleaning and picking up will fill in the times when I need to get up and move around a bit. Hopefully I'll et more sewing done than it seemed I would first thing this morning!

Happy Quilting!

Sue