Habitat Challenge

Last month our quilt guild did the Jay McCarroll Habitat Challenge, and I have to say that this was the first time I actually "created" my own design so I was very nervous. Up to this point, I had only done quilt kits or patterns from books, so I started with a sketch of what I wanted and went from there.

Overall, it wasn't too bad, and there were some "oops" moments along the way, but I learned quite a bit and discovered how creative I can be. First, let me say, that I truly appreciated Jay's designs on Project Runway (which I am addicted to by the way), and I am glad that he won. However, these fabrics were the epitome of the word "challenge". I sat on these fabrics for awhile until it no longer pained me to stare at them and got to work. Don't get me wrong, they are certainly very interesting designs, and in the right context would be seriously awesome, but between the flashbacks from the 80's and the odd colors that went together (but not really); I was stumped for a bit.

Luckily, the month prior Quiltique had a carnival night where I was introduced to English Paper piecing in the form of manageable hexagons! I thought, okay, small pieces of this fabric against a bright background may do it the justice it deserves. I had been wanting to do a sewing machine cover anyway so I took my fat quarters and started waiving them over some solids to see what clicked. It ended up being this beautiful vibrant royal purple and I was finally on my way. My first step was taping the fabric pieces to my back sliding door to use a sort of light table to place my hexagon templates and fussy cut out my pieces.

Two things I learned during this part of the process: (1) painters tape works very well to put fabric up with as it does not stick to it or leave any sticky residue, and (2) during the day, my sliding glass door makes a fabulous backlit space for tracing templates (it's like a second design wall!). From there I moved to the paper piecing which were precut hexagons I purchased during the carnival and what is even better; they are reusable. I simply cut a 1/4" border around the pinned templates and then basted down the tucked edges.

 I have to say I really feel in love with this technique! Anything that involves my sitting and doing hand stitching is always a plus and this was so easy to pick up. Once I stitched down all my hexagons, I laid them out in the order I wanted and started stitching one side of each hexagon to the other, removed the paper templates, and then cut out my purple background. There are many tutorials on-line about how to measure your machine for a cover and there are a few types of covers as well. I decided just to make a simple slip over that covered the entire machine (since the desert out here is fairly dusty) I wanted it to cover the sides as well. The hexagon strip was appliqued on top of a strip of purple fabric and then I left a gap on each side to add the yellow borders.

Once I sewed the yellow strips in, I basted the layers together and quilted a diagonal-abstract design, including the side pieces as well.

Okay so not as haphazard as I anticipated since both sides kind of match, but overall I was pleased with the result. Finally, the last step was sewing down the hexagons along the edges of each one, sew the sides onto the main piece, and bind the bottom with the matching yellow fabric. The final result was...

I did try to do some piping as well, but another learning experience was involved in this process. Instead of a 1/4" seam allowance, I should have left at least a 1/2" allowance to leave room for all the layers to be sewn since some of the edges did not catch. With some resewing, fabric glue and hand stitching it came out, but it will be a little while before I attempt piping again.

Our quilt group came up with some really great projects; some making full size quilts and others making small projects like a purse and coasters. It was a great mix of ideas and in the end, I finally designed something on my own which actually prepared me for this month's pillow exchange which involved more creative design.

mm

I'm only dancing...

Hello fellow quilters and friends. So, an unrelated quilting blog for today...
I am belly dancing at my husband's group art showing this First Friday (today) downtown at the 1221 Gallery on Main Street near Charleston. There will be other dancers, artists, a BBQ (hosted by my cousins who are a biker gang), a fiddle player, and if that wasn't enough...a goat! It will be one hell of a party. Don't miss it! Come one, come all and drink for tomorrow we will be quilting.

A teaser of my head piece.

Can we talk?

Normally I try to reserve my blog for mainly quilting, crafts and family hyjinx, but this blog is about discrimination, judgement, and the dwindling life line of humanity. I would never attempt to turn this venue into a place to vent about social justice or the way people should be treated, but I feel that this just needs to be said.

My husband and I celebrated our 3rd year anniversary this weekend by going to Springdale, UT just outside of Zion National Park. One of our top two favorite places to visit. While we were there, the locals of Springdale were so genuine, and helpful, that we started some conversation with them about moving there in a bout a year or so after I have finished school. They welcomed us with open arms and gave us numerous towns and cities to explore for places to work/commute. Now, some of you may already know that I am being trained to become a mental health counselor (therapist) and have taken quite an interest in art therapy and especially therapy through quilting. While there has not been much research on the subject, I feel that there would be a great call for it and it would fill a gap in art therapy that exists. My husband and I were given several counseling centers to visit and since we were there on a Tuesday, I knew we could catch them in the office and get some much needed information. We were given both Cedar City and St. George and meccas for counseling centers.

We first went to Cedar City, but wasn't really what were looking for and proceeded to drive all the way south again toward St. George. After heading into the picturesque neighborhoods, with their adorable cottage houses and tree lined streets we were enthusiastic about my working there and commuting from Springdale. We pulled over to get our barrings and I whipped out the iPhone t locate any quilting shops in the area. I was curious to get an idea about what guilds were around and let them know who I was and we were thinking of moving. The first (and only) shop that we went into was Lazy Daisy Cottage http://lazydaisycottage.blogspot.com/ and it was packed with glorious fabrics, and other treasures. My husband and I ventured further back into the shop where a woman was sewing and there were a few others milling around the back "employees only" area. I started speaking with the lady sewing (she didn't offer her name) and was explaining to her my interests in moving and that I was a quilter. She said I should speak with the owner and summoned her out.

I offered my name, "Hello, my name is Mary and my husband and I were thinking of moving to Utah and I was just curious about the quilting community here. I am hoping to bring my therapy business to St. George and possibly start quilting therapy workshops." At this point the last not so much as offered her name, looked both my husband and I up and down to make her final assessment that we were not worth her time and common courtesy. She was rude, very curt with her answers and made the comment on several occasions that quilting is really quite conservative. I can imagine that my tattoos were partially to blame, but to treat another quilter like that was really quite hurtful. She kept briefly answering my questions, and also questioned everything I said, "what do you mean you want to do therapy?" and "I don't really know what to tell you but you can check the phone book for other shops." RUDE> So, we left the shop, after her husband questioned whether I had even quilted before and I was almost in tears. I have been discriminated against before, and it is quite possible that she was also feeling I would be a bit of competition, even though I explained that I was not opening up a quilt shop.

I don't believe in generalizations, I know that not all people in St. George or that quilting guild would be the same, but I have to say, I really don't want to go back and I feel that is exactly what she wanted to accomplish. It reminded me of that scene in Pretty Woman when she goes in with money to shop buy no one will help her and they tell her that she doesn't belong there. Maybe once I have my quilt therapy set up and I have made a great contribution to the St. George area, I can go back in and say "big mistake, big, huge mistake."

God bless her and what demons she might have to work through, but I am still licking my wounds on that one. Please send her some good energy to help her through her obstacles.

Take care quilters and take care of each other.

Oh Finally...

I have been so very busy the last month or so. Work, teaching, taking classes, etc. Recently I just gave a presentation to my freshmen class about time management and "how to eat an elephant -- one bite at a time." Well, I feel like I am eating my elephant on a buffet line with chopsticks (and I am pretty good with chopsticks). For every twenty bites, I was actually only getting 5 bites of food in my mouth and feeling like there was a line of people waiting to get at what I was trying to eat. So, I have decided to step off the buffet line this weekend and take some time from "eating". Since I have a numerous amount of W.I.P. projects to chose from, I decided to take my winter version single girl off the staircase railing and attack it with some river rock motif. Now, I have to say, that while I have been practicing on some quilting sandwiches, I was so nervous to get this started.

Here is my first attempt at free motion river rocks. For me, it is not an option for someone else to quilt my work, as I want to be able to look back or give it as a gift knowing that I have created the whole thing. Granted I am not designing my own patterns (yet!), but at least I know that every stitch was done by me. However, there is a higher level of frustration by quilting your own projects..which is why I am blogging after a shot of tequila instead of still working on my river rocks.

Here is another view.

I am really hoping to get some more quilting done in between my other responsibilities. There are two baby quilts waiting for me too...ugh. It will be so nice when all I have is "work" and my quilting. I say "work" because I know once I am doing full-time therapy it won't be work for me, but where I belong. Back to my single girl.

Abbey Bag...

Well after being ill with an invading virus of some sort for a week and a half, I was able to start quilting and doing some projects again. I decided to start small and finally make an Abbey Bag! Plus, it gave me something to do with my extra Tula Pink Neptune fabric! Here, she is, the first Abbey Bag (I am sure of many)...

And a top view...

The construction went fairly well, although I did change things up a bit on some of the directions. I didn't feel as confident using fabric glue for some of the connections so I went ahead and stitched it together, but still used glue in some places and was pleasantly surprised by how well the glue did! Now I have somewhere to put all my trimmings and threads from all the yos I am still making. The progress bar is getting higher and I managed to do quite a few while I was bed-ridden. Here is a little example of some yo accomplishments and humor while I was sick...

That's right! I made 22 in one morning/afternoon. It's amazing what you can get done when you don't have to go to work. Someday, I will have a studio/shop/private practice where I can quilt in between clients, hold workshops and quilt all weekend. Ah, the dream.

Yo Momma is so...

Okay, so the yo yos are making me kind of punchy now. I gathered up some more fabric and cut a whole new stack of 5.5" squares. Thanks to Sew Obsessed, Quiltique, and Joann's I was able to add some great colors to the project.

You might recognize some of the designers in here: Amy Butler, Heather Bailey, Michael Miller, Kaffe Fasset, Joel Dewberry, and Anna Maria Horner. I figured if I average 12 yos a day, it will take me 28 days to finish the rest of my goal of 409! However, I pushed myself to get 15 done this evening (this really doesn't seem like an amount to brag about), but my basket is starting to fill up and the yos are multiplying!

Once I made a yo from all my new fabrics I decided to lay them out on my background fabric to make sure I didn't have too much of one color and not enough of another. I think I concluded that I need a little more pink, orange, and purple. The green and yellow is certainly covered.

What do you all think? I need some advice.

State of Yo....

For those of you who are too young or whose mother did not drag them to a Smother's Brothers concert when they were children, would not know about being in the "State of Yo" as the 'Yo-Yo Man' would get into prior to starting his yo-yo act. Well, I am in a state of yo with my new yo-yo maker and my new quilt adventure. I discovered this quilt on the cover of American Patchwork & Quilting (June 2011, Issue 110) and just HAD to make it.

Between the turquoise background in batik and the bright, fun colors of the yo's I was practically salivating before I made it to the checkout to buy the magazine. Now, let's take a step back here: (1) Have I ever made yo-yo's? No. (2) Have I ever worked with a batik fabric? No. and (3) Was I aware that this cute 'little' quilt required 409 of those a fore mentioned, never having done, yo-yo's? Uh, No. So, here I am at my first attempt of making them, and yes, I went with Clover's 60mm Extra Large Yo-Yo Maker template/tool because I wasn't really sure what I was getting myself into.

After some trial and taking the first one apart, I finally got the hang of it. However I did consult a couple of tutorials and videos on-line prior to attempting this. As always, I decided to Mary Shelley (Frankenstein reference) a few of the tips together to form my own way of making them work. I took some from Heather Bailey's tutorial, some from Lazy Girl Designs, and some You Tube videos. Here is the finished product...

Now only 406 to go! (This is only a fourth of the stack that needs to be done)

I might have to recruit relatives with tequila to get this done (yes, mom I am talking to you).

Basting my Single Girl...

Well, with the Valori Wells quilt finally complete, it is time to pick up the Single Girl again. I have decided to try to basting video tutorial that I found rather than the old safety pin method. Partially, because I have decided to use Perl 8 cotton to hand quilt this one and I just didn't want all those safety pins in the way. Additionally, I am always on the lookout for new ideas of making quilting easier.

So here is my attempt of the herringbone baste that is described in Sharon Schamber's Network via YouTube. Here is Part 1 and 2.

Lucky number three...

My third quilt is finally done! Thanks to another P.I.G.S. Night Out at Sew Obsessed last night and some work this morning, I can finally give my family their quilt. Yes, it is 113 degrees outside, but I know that my husband and I will crank up the AC just to cuddle underneath it tonight! She is quilted with a beautiful satin/cotton binding and is the first one adorned with my new quilt label. Are my corners perfect? No. Are my quilted lines straight? No. Does it lay perfectly square? No. Will my family enjoy it, love it and have many years curling up underneath it? Yes. She turned out just wonderfully and I can't wait to have everyone see it.

This was Valori Wells pattern used with her High Desert Del Hi quilt fabric line. I fell in love with it when I saw it in a magazine and I fell in love with it all over again when I saw her in all her glory.

 Here is a picture of it spread out on the bed. It is almost big enough to fit a Queen sized bed, with a little overhang. We have a DKNY quilt on our bed right now, which is all white, but I think we have to put the new quilt on for now!

View 2.
I just love the colors so much! Especially next to the dark wood bed frame.











I need to work on adhering the label some, as the dark fabric shows though a little, but I used Steam-a-seam and attached some of the scrap material from the front as a "frame." I love that I can label my quilts now to remember when they were finished and to dedicate them to my loved ones.

Next time I will have my husband take the pictures; he has a GREAT eye for pictures. Here she is all folded up and waiting to be presented to the family. Her big reveal is in less than two hours! I can't wait.

Blooming and Napping...

My husband and I made a trip out to Zion, Utah as we are known to do every once in awhile; just to get away. While we were there we noticed how "green" everything was and against the desert landscape, sandwiched in between brown dirt with rocks and the occasional green patches of native plants, was the most vibrant pink poking its head out to be seen. We just had to pull over and take pictures of it.

Aren't they just amazing?! The only 'color' out there was this (there were a few very tiny little lavender and yellow meadow flowers too), but these just screamed out! It was a wonderful day of walking, talking, great fish tacos, coffee, and just enjoying nature with no city lights or large buildings. We drove back later that evening and confirmed further that we need to move somewhere out of the main city at some point. School first, then moving.

As far as our newest family member, she has a few things down very very well: (1) crouching by the bottom step of the stairwell to jump at your feet and hang around your ankle (she has quite a grip), (2) jumping (as opposed to clawing) her way up to the top of furniture, (3) she can scratch and/or bite through at least two layers of skin in less than 2 seconds (you actually don't even know it has happened until you start bleeding), and lastly, (4) napping. I have left out things like eating, pooping and meowing for the obvious reasons. As like children, she is most angelic while she is sleeping...

She is just hysterical. Her sleeping positions would make me wake up in a giant knot and not being able to move for at least an hour. My husband recently made a video of her sleeping with her paws over her eyes, and as he lifted up her paw you could see her eyes closed, then the paw would just go back into position. Here is a still of the video. I have to find a way to put this on my blog border.

On that note, goodnight and I am off to quilt.

Single Girl continues...

I have started to sew all the blocks (well, into actual blocks) and have begun sewing the blocks together. It is coming along fairly well, until my Janome had to go to the sewing machine hospital. Seems as though you cannot leave the spool you winding bobbins with on the spool holder as the end will sucked up into the side vent and wrap itself around the gears and the belts. It was so ugly when they pulled the side of the machine apart, but a few snips and pulls (no damage) left me smiling on the way back home with my baby.

So here is one block of the Single Girl quilt, yet as I am sewing the blocks together I can't say that the circles are 'butting' up against each other as they are supposed to. Later I read on a blog that it is easier to sew them together with a zipper foot, as the side of the regular foot gets in the way and pushes the fabric to the side. Oh well, it is what it is; it's not perfect, but I did it all on my own.

The circle edges and the seams are lining up fairly well, and overall, I am very pleased with the way it looks. SO much so, that I am starting to cut out the fabric for the South Pacific themed Single Girl. As soon as this is sewn together, I will start sewing the other one together. Once I get to the hand quilting for the grey Single Girl, then I can take it to work and do it over lunch (hopefully keeping my hands busy will also stop from the eating so much). Here are the fabrics for the other quilt waiting to be traced and cut.

I wake up every morning and go to bed every night seeing these little slices of heaven waiting for me to turn them into their soul's purpose--motivation!!

Ooo, it was like Christmas this week!!!

Well it started with receiving my quilt labels in the mail the other day, and they turned out fantastic! They read, "Quilt made by Mary "Bunny" Martin-jarofspools.blogspot.com."

They have six different colors, in Fuchsia, Teal, Purple, Orange sherbert, Grey and Lime. Here is a pic with them attached and printed on a yard of fabric. The colors are so vibrant, and they were printed so fabulously. Again, it was Spoonflower that printed them and the cost was $18 plus shipping. So easy!

I opted to cut them out with scissors as opposed to the rotary cutter and ruler method. You can either put them on with fusing, or sew them down on the edges. I may even have enough of a border to sew on some fabric along the edge and just applique them on at some point. The original tutorial by Jaybird suggested to leave a 1/4" margin around each one to have room to fold them under, but I had a difficult time as it was just getting them designed at all! Thanks to one of my budding Marketing students at the college, Annie, she helped me get my design into print.

 I cannot imagine that I will actually get to use all of these; that would be a lot of quilts! I will probably have to order more labels due to changing my blog address or something before getting through them all. Hopefully, I will have one quilt done soon so I can put one on. The blank space allows for me to write in the title of the quilt and when it was made. The first one will go on my Valori Wells Quilt that I hope to have done this weekend. ; )

My second gift this week, was my beautiful Echino-Extra Wide-Madrigal-Oxblood fabric! This has to be some of the most gorgeous fabric I have ever seen, and when I saw it on Judith's Needles and Lemons blog who was using it for the back of a quilt, I just knew I had to have it!

So here it is in all 6 yards of glory! I plan on making this the whole quilt top and embellishing it with Perle 8 cotton in different colors, some beads, and sequins. I plan on outlining the flowers and highlighting the print all together. Then I will use the thickest batting and tie it. I can't wait to start on it.

Isn't it just dreamy?! It will take quite some time to decorate it, but it just seems to be calling for some nice hand embroidery and a little sparkle. The fuchsia buds on the vine will be in a matching floss done with French Knots, and the birds will have some sequins along the back. Not sure how much of the big blue flowers I will do, but it will work itself out I'm sure. I will keep you all posted with the progress.

And if that wasn't enough...I also received by Perle 8 cotton for the Single girl quilt! It is a wonderful steel blue color, #932 I believe, and it will be used in the pattern given by Denise Schmidt for the quilt. I was going to go with a dark grey, but I thought, hey what the heck--it doesn't have to match! I decided to pick up the blues in the yellow circles as opposed to going with the obvious grey or yellow options.

I love that they gave it to me in the box. It was like opening up a box of chocolates (I refrained from licking them), but it was so hard not to. So many projects, so many presents, and a whole weekend to do them. Woo-hoo!!

Still here...

Well, I am still here but have been VERY busy with school, work and quilting (story of my life). I am diligently working on my Single Girl and thanks to the P.I.G.S. night out at Sew Obsessed in Henderson, I got a good chunk done (well, in between alot of laughs, pizza and root beer). Hopefully I will have my Single Girl quilt top done this week to post for all to see, but I have to say, these curves were tough to piece and even harder to butt up next to each other! Yikes, Denise Schmidt!

So what could I possibly add to this long laundry list of things I am juggling now; quilt labels! Thanks to Jaybird Quilt's tutorial on how to get fabric quilting labels printed by the yard, I have decided this is the way to go! Here is a sample of what I have come up with, please let me know what you think. They will be printed in orange, purple, lime, and fuchsia just because I LOVE jewel tones. Jaybird suggests using a service called Spoonflower for printing as it is only about $18 a yard, but for those of you that want to try your hand at fabric design, that is really what they do!

So here is the draft version of the label:

It's hard to tell, but this will be a rectangle about 2.5" by 4.0" that I can fuse onto my quilt or stitch around the side. The middle part will be left blank to allow me to write in the title of the quilt, the date and whether it was machine or hand quilted/pieced. I am so excited. I have only labeled one quilt and so many tutorials tell you that it is so worth the time and effort to add a label (it's about time). Thank you to Jaybird for all the advice and the great tutorial and when they arrive I will update with a pic!

The Newest Family Member

This is our new kitty we picked up on Friday. Her name is Griffin (a.k.a Kitty Griffin) after the comedian Kathy Griffin who we love. She is supposedly Siamese but I think she is a blend of Siamese and Ragdoll. She is a complete love and she already sleeps with us! I am sure in due time there will be pictures of her on quilts; if I can ever get one finished.

Top Left: Her sleeping on the way home, Top Right: Her trying to attack my IPhone camera, Bottom Left: Kitty Burrito, Bottom Right: Her Glamour Shots pose.

Single Girl Part Tres...

Well, here we are again with curves and curves and more curves. this quilt has more curves than I do! So I finished the first two of many blocks and they came out pretty alright! I had a few tiny puckers but nothing major and for my first quilt with curved pieces, I am really not going to make a fuss about it. Thankfully my sewing of clothing came in handy and I tried to remember all the tricks for sewing curved pieces of fabric together, but there is ALOT of pinning and massaging going on. It take a long time to prepare the piece(s) for sewing but once they are together the sewing takes a mere seconds to do. Kind of like Disneyland; you wait in line for hours and the ride is only a few minutes long. Here is a pic of the first block:

I am bound and determined to work on this more today, but between schoolwork, work-work, and my grading papers, not sure how much I will get done. I will keep posting as I go though; for those that are following along.

It's a Mod, Mod, World...

So at the last meeting of the Las Vegas Modern Quilt Guild, we were blessed with a tutorial by Cola on how to do the Mod Mosaic Pillows that she had made. While her efforts were great in helping us get started, I had a bit of a creative meltdown from the beginning. I am so used to following a pattern or sticking to exact measurements, that I found it difficult just to 'let go' and do something without a plan per se. Cola helped me gather some fabics, since I had not come prepared with scraps for the project, and here are the selections we came up with.

Some of them are from Michael Miller's Sweet Meadow collection and I believe the others are from Poppy Parade. It started out pretty alright, but I have decided to leave it for now until I at least finish a few more sections of my Single Girl Quilt. Here is what I have so far, and I am really working hard on just 'going with the flow' and not being too concerned about being meticulous with my cutting and measuring.

For further ideas you can check out the Mod Mosaic on Flickr. My husband is just wondering when I will actually FINISH one project. Back to sewing.

South Pacific Single Girl

Well I haven't even finished the first one, and I am already planning the next one. I have decided on my next Single Girl to be themed South Pacific, sort of tropical, vintage, and colorful. Here are my fabrics that I have been collecting...not sure if I will add more or not.

I am planning on an off-white background to match the background of some of the fabrics. Since I am quilting my first quilt in a dark gray Perle 8 cotton, this one will be in a salmon color Perle 8. I can't wait to get started on it. This is nuts, since I haven't even finished the first one. Oh well, I could have worse addictions.

Single Girl Part Deux...

Well, I am making progress. Slowly, but making progress. I have all my A-H quarters sewn and only saw a few pieces not lined up so well. I have to say that the posts I have read are very helpful, but have also made me very nervous to make this quilt. Once person even said that you have to measure just perfectly or the whole thing will be off. Great. I have decided that it will be what it will be.

I bought some pieces of dark gray poster board from JoAnn's to see how the circle would look against my not yet purchase Kona Charcoal fabric. So far so good. Now, I did cut two of the pieces upside down, so I had to re-cut them, but otherwise, it went pretty well. After once again consulting all posts for the Single Girl Quilt Along on Ginger Monkey's blog, I cut, and cut, and cut out all my templates. I have already started planning another single girl with what I am calling some South Pacific themed fabric and an off white background. This time I will actually trace the templates as shown on the blog, and also make copies of the templates rather than transferring them to plastic sheets. I feel that I made some errors in transferring them over. We will see.

Oh so many templates. Each one has twelve pieces to make twelve rings. In the meantime I ordered my Kona fabric for the front, back and binding. However, they only had 5.8 yards so now I am short for the back. With the suggestion of my stepdaughter, I may make the back from a fabric that is soft and/or fuzzy. We will see what I can find.

Here is my yummy charcoal fabric. It is even richer than I thought it would be (as you can see by the faded gray color of my background paper that I thought would match perfectly). The only pieces that I am not too sure about are the gray with ferns fabric, but I'm not changing it now!
So one of the posts explained that you cannot line up the pieces like at the top and the bottom like you would normally, but rather where they intersect. What? After much deliberation with myself, I decided to go old school and draw a 1/4" seam allowance on the back of the pieces (which later reduced itself to x's in each corner) and then put two pins through each corner where they intersect like you would for hand piecing. Granted I am sure there is an easier and/or fastest way to do this, but this is all I came up with.

After lining them up, I pinned a couple more in for good measure and sewed away.

After all 12 of these quarters were done, I will move onto the next quarter. I might get his done by summer if I'm lucky. Like I said, so far they are coming out alright, but I am concerned about matching them up with their charcoal cousins later on and it still coming out in the shape of a square. I might call on you experts that I know to help me "make it work" if needed. I will say that I have learned not only what worked, but what I will not do the next time on my South Pacific quilt. For the quilting, Denyse Schmidt includes a pattern to follow, which I will, but I have decided to do it with size 8 perle cotton. I can't wait! Keep posted to view the progress. I think I might also count how many cups of coffee it takes to make this quilt as well.