This quilt was a commission for a client, for her Star Wars fan. All the fabrics were picked by them and sent to me (9 packages). They wanted a two sided quilt, with the dark storm trooper on the back and the white one on the front. I went with a medallion style layout, and kept adding borders until it got to queen size.

Two days ago, I put it on the frame and was measuring the backing and top together to center them on each other. Out of curiosity I rolled the whole un-quilted quilt up on the rollers, phew! I’m glad I did, as the backing was nine inches short. Unpinned it and added a wide blue strip to the bottom, re-pinned it and put it back on the frame. In a classic “do as I say, not as I do” move, I knowingly didn’t add 4 inches on all sides of the backing. I ended up basting some waste strips to the sides as I went, so the side clamps would hold.

The quilting went very quickly, I used a pantograph called “The Force” by Crystal Smythe. I made it a bit larger, each circle is 8 inches, and I filled the quilt with staggered 12 rows. About 3 hours of quilting, not too bad, I almost quit for the day at half done, but pushed through and finished. Now to get the binding on.

I got to work on the Pumpkins this week too. I wanted to use the folded corner ruler, rather than the method on the magazine. I don’t need any more cut off HST’s in my realm. Plus, since I am working with scraps of the Halloween Figs quilt, I have to be frugal. My sample block went well, so I cut the rest of the pumpkins (19) and started cutting the background pieces for each block. I have enough white prints to do each block the same, but the oranges and black/grays are going to be mixed. Each block has 16 HST’s and eight corner triangles, and a bunch of squares and rectangles. The Sew-a-Long co-ordinator, Ivory Spring, has us sewing the center pumpkins first, ten per week. Since we are on week two, I need to get those done and the next set, by 8/17.

Speaking of BOMs, I am working on my two, I have not done the August installments yet. I did get the July ones done, 32 sashings strips for A Ribbon Runs Through it, and four more alternate blocks for Reunion. The fabrics for August ARRTI, got here the other day, 32 more sashing strips. I am not too enthusiastic about them, as they are many parted and a bit fiddly. The Reunion pack came last week, looks like one block, that’s good.

I did sign up for another 12 month BOM, which also starts this month, called “Message in a Bottle“. We recently had new windows installed in our master bedroom and removed a non-working gas fireplace. Now there is a blank wall, approximately 54 inches wide, that needs artwork a quilt. I like the quirkiness of the MinaB quilt, there’s patch work and appliqué, a lot going on and the size fits perfectly.

Off to sew a bit of binding.

Be Kind.