6 Days Until Quilt Week: Mission Impossible, Vintage Repair + New Tumbler Top All Ready for Quilting!

Oh my gosh, you guys -- is this what it feels like to plan your work, work your plan, and finish a project way ahead of a deadline?!  

It was a little after midnight when I finished the last seam in Lars's Mission Impossible graduation quilt top and gave it a final pressing.  I needed help getting it back up on the design wall for a final photo, and my family was sleeping.  

72 x 96 Mission Impossible Quilt Top, Almost Finished in Photo, Totally Finished IRL

I decided that one of the almost-done pictures would have to suffice; you can't really tell from a photo what's sewn and what isn't, anyway.  So I folded it up carefully, draped it over a hanger, and hung it in the guest room closet.  I'm officially renaming our guest room closet Quilt Purgatory, now that I have quilt tops lined up in there, patiently waiting their turn on the longarm:

1. Jingle BOM (Piecing & Applique)
2. Paint Me a Story (Bear Paws & Sawtooth Stars)
3. Pineapple Nostalgia (Pineapple Log Cabin)
4. Mission Impossible (Geese In Circles)
5. Vintage Utility Quilt Restoration

In addition to those five, I have a backing and binding prepared and ready to go for the Modern Baby Clam Shell quilt.  

My EQ8 Design for Modern Baby Clam Shells, 40 x 40

The modern baby for whom this quilt is intended is now four months old, so this project will be moving up on my list.  So far all I've done is design work and fabric shopping (I spend a LOT OF TIME on the design and fabric shopping part), and I've cut out the print clam shells, as you can see below.  After putting the Mission Impossible quilt top to bed Sunday night in the wee hours of Monday morning, I threw these print clams up on the empty design wall and moved them around until I liked the arrangement.  I ended up swapping out a couple of the prints so the layout in real life doesn't exactly match the EQ8 rendering, but don't you love how EQ8 quilt design software perfectly scales those prints so that they look exactly the same on the computer as they do when I cut out my actual fabric?

Modern Baby Clam Shells On the Design Wall at Midnight

Next for that project is cutting out all of the turquoise background fabric -- whole and partial clam shells plus circles for the center row.    I think this quilt is going to need some machine embroidered personalization, too, and that means I have to revisit my options for loading my Windows based Bernina v8 Designer Plus embroidery software on my nifty iMac computer.  I'm looking forward to digitizing with the giant 27" monitor so I can see what I'm doing (and my younger son, Anders, is looking forward to inheriting my laptop as soon as I get that software working on my new computer!).

Mom's First Quilt Top: 4 inch Tumblers, will be approx. 42 x 56 after trimming

Another exciting top that is nearly ready for Quilt Purgatory is an outreach tumbler quilt that I'm super excited about because my MOM made this top, all by herself!  I have launched another unsupervised quilter into the world!  YAY!!!  When we finished sewing the curved seams of the Mission Impossible blocks together, I wanted my mom to stay and hang out with me while I continued working on the graduation quilt.  I got out my Accuquilt GO! Baby die cutter and the 4" tumbler die and set her loose in my scrap bins, and this is what she came up with.  The dark purple fabric is the same Kona Solid I was using in Lars's graduation quilt.  It ended up a bit larger than I'd initially anticipated so I'll need to piece a new backing for it and find a suitable binding in my stash before packing this one away in Quilt Purgatory.

This will be yet another quilt top that I can practice on to improve my longarm quilting skills, and when it's finished I'll donate it to the Charlotte Quilters' Guild Outreach Committee.  It will go to either to the Pediatric Unit at the hospital, where it will bring some sunshine, snuggling and cheer to someone who needs it!  I'm looking forward to practice SITD (stitching in the ditch) all of those seams between the tumblers and maybe quilting something fun (scary fun!) in the solid tumblers, where the stitching will show up the best.

MEANWHILE...  

In preparation for my upcoming longarm quilting workshops at Quilt Week, I went back and rewatched the Judi Madsen's Quilting Makes a Difference iQuilt video classes I'd purchased ages ago, taking notes and writing down all of the questions that popped into my head.  I used the "Ask a Question" feature built into the iQuilt platform and Judi got back to me with answers to all of my questions within 24 hours, much faster than I'd expected.  

Judi's Quilting Wide Open Spaces Book, Available on Amazon here

I also have both of Judi's books and I started rereading those (and taking MORE notes) in the waiting room during Lars's wisdom teeth extraction yesterday morning.  (Surgery went well but Lars did not tolerate the anesthesia well.  He was vomiting and in a lot of pain despite the drugs for most of yesterday -- I felt so bad for him that I cleaned his room and did all of his laundry, which I NEVER do anymore).

Judi's Secondary Designs Book, Available on Amazon here

I just ordered Lisa Calle's Divide and Design book on Amazon (she's the other teacher whose longarm quilting workshops I'll be taking at Paducah), but I saw that she also has some video classes available on iQuilt.  I'm not as familiar with her work, but if I have time I might do one of Lisa's online iQuilt classes before taking workshops with her in person at Quilt Week.  

Lisa's Divide and Design Book, Available on Amazon here

Personally, I am a huge book learner more than anything else -- that's my favorite way to learn, and I highlight and annotate my books so I can quickly go back and find information when I need it months or even years later.  Video classes don't make for great references because you have to sit through the whole video again to find the information you were looking for.  But of course the downside to both books AND video classes is the lack of instructor feedback and the inability to ask questions.  But we all learn differently, and it's great to have all of these options available today.

I have a meeting with an interior design client today and will probably have followup work to do in my office when I get back.  Not sure how late my workday will wrap up and whether I'll have any "sewjo" left at the end of today, but if I DO get time in my studio, I'll be using it to clean and oil my longarm machine and load up a quilt!  

To-Do On Tuesday:

I know I'm a day late for To-Do On Tuesday, but I've got goals to share nonetheless:

1. Spa Day for my APQS Millennium Longarm Quilting Machine!  She needs to be dusted off, any oxidation wiped away from aluminum rails, hook race cleaned out thoroughly with WD-40 and then oiled, and get a fresh, new needle 
2. Load that Vintage Repair Quilt and get it quilted
3. Continue preparing (and start PACKING!) for my longarm quilting workshops at Quilt Week
4. Trim sides of Outreach Tumbler quilt top
5. Piece backing for Outreach Tumbler quilt
6. Select and cut binding for Outreach Tumbler quilt, hopefully from stash

I'm linking today's post up with the following linky parties:

TUESDAY

·      Colour and Inspiration Tuesday at http://www.cleverchameleon.com.au

·       To-Do Tuesday at Stitch ALL the Things: http://stitchallthethings.com

WEDNESDAY

·      Midweek Makers at www.quiltfabrication.com/

·      WOW WIP on Wednesday at www.estheraliu.blogspot.com

THURSDAY

·      Needle and Thread Thursday at http://www.myquiltinfatuation.blogspot.com/  

FRIDAY

·      Finish It Up Friday at www.sillymamaquilts.com

·      Whoop Whoop Fridays at www.confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com

·      Finished Or Not Friday at http://busyhandsquilts.blogspot.com/