Becky's quilt obsession

The top is finished!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It needs a good pressing, then ?? I don’t know if I want to try to quilt it myself. I keep thinking of quilting designs, but I’m not sure I have the skill to carry them out. I don’t want to mess it up after 488 flying geese! If you look at the picture closely, it looks like the left side is brighter, almost like stained glass. It’s because of where it is placed in the living room, the only place large enough for the picture. Here’s the un-cropped photo. The DGK’s had moved all the furniture to the walls so they could build a fort. Works for me!    Happy Quilting, Becky

Other bloggers have cameras in bird nest boxes. I have a swallow nest under my deck. The babies have hatched, and are learning to fly around. They were flying under the porch (it’s 18’ to the ceiling), and we shooed them away last night. When DS and DGC were leaving, this was the scene on the ledge above the garage door. They sat there sleeping away while we tried multiple times to actually take a good photo. The flash didn’t bother them a bit. I tried to shoo them away, but they didn’t budge a bit. They make an awful mess on the concrete around their nest; I didn’t want the garage doors to end up the same way. I lost. Becky

I’m working on assembling the 4 corners now. As you can see on the table, about half of the components are finished, and I’m constructing the others as I go along to keep from putting the wrong flying geese panels in places. I angled this picture to see how it is going to look when turned. When I was planning the extensions, the instructor and I discussed what it would look like with the same border fabrics in both the center and extension. The black/blue was a no brainer to repeat as they never touched. We identified that the outer border would touch in the centers, and she said that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. I just looked at one at Quiltworx.com that is made this way, and I think it will be all right, but it seems that the last rounds of flying geese just starts out of the border instead of looking like it is behind it, as in the center portion. I guess it is another hmmmm moment. If I can keep the DGKs well this week, maybe I can finish the top. I’m planning various ways ...

This may not look like much, but the snake is 8 deep, and the corners are 4 deep. That’s a lot of flying geese paper piecing. This is the last of the paper foundation piecing for the entire quilt. I will cut out the rest of the border and begin sewing, hopefully, tomorrow. It seems like it took forever, but I was sick (now well), DH was sick, DGD#2 was sick, end of school activities took lots of babysitting time, and now it is summer, and the DGKs come often. Spring came, and that means tending the flowers and trees as well. DGD#1 is now on the couch, sick, with a prescription coming. I hope I can sew some tomorrow, but I’m not counting on it. I was hoping to finish this top by June 1, but it may be a few days late. None of the rest is too difficult; it will just be manhandling the quilt as it grows. This finishes at about 98” square. At least with all my staring at the top while making flying geese, I think I’ve figured out how I want it quilted. Now I’m debating if I am good enoug...

My biggest accomplishment these past 2 weeks was cutting out the bazillion flying geese needed for the extensions on the Glacier Star. I’m using 24 fabrics in them, and cut out 12 triangles of each fabric. Then I cut out the “sky” pieces for all of them. After I did that, I decided I really wanted to see what it would look like with the darker background ( one in the left picture) for the first set of geese. I only had scraps of it left from the center part, so ended up cutting some of these pieces out individually to get enough of them. I finished the first 4 arcs of these.     This is the start of the corner extension. They are just pinned up there. I love the look of all the different colors in the fan. I think I like the darker background on the geese, although the geese don’t stand out as much as they would with the lighter background of the previous row of geese. I was afraid that fabric would just disappear in the light outer fabric. I think I will make the next gr...

Glacier Star center from the pattern by Judy and Brad Niemeyer.Now for the nearly 300 flying geese for the extension corners that turn this on point and makes it about 96 inches square. I’m wishing I had used a lighter fabric for the center star. The quilt is brighter in person.  I don’t think there will be a next time. Happy Quilting, Becky

I’m continuing to work on the Glacier Star – by Judy Niemeyer. You can see by the white what seams I have left – One set in corner and 3 Ys. I do like it now – the color of this picture isn’t the best. The center background that I hated was toned down by the addition of the near black and the darker middle background. As suggested, I changed out some of the geese in the last round and added more blue, which shows up better when the room is in daylight. I still have the four corner extensions that turn this into a queen. There are about 252 flying geese in the border of those, which are quite boring for me. My DFF that is finished with hers, said to just put on some good music, get into the zone, and make them. There will be even more of the blue geese there. I’m so slow on this as I have been proofreading my DH’s book for the 4th, and hopefully the last time. He had purchased Ancestry for use looking up George Mansfield (the father of 2 –ft Narrow Gauge Railroads), and y...