Friday, May 6, 2016

APQ 2016 April UFO

My fourth UFO for this challenge project was originally thought to be a piece of cake.  In reality, not so much.  This was a 2.5" square challenge from 2014 where all the squares were to be from fabrics in my stash.  It could have been as small as one square or a large as a crib quilt (if you wanted to enter it for a prize).  I had enough squares for a lap size quilt so I went that route.  I was not planning to enter it into the drawing since I knew I would not make the entry deadline which was OK by me.  I was looking just to finish it and have a warm lap quilt for the cabin.  I finished the 12 blocks which had 25 squares in each block.  Sashing was added between each block.  Then the holidays hit!  


I thought the completion was going to be a slam dunk.  Just add a border, add batting and backing and quilt.  I wanted to use the same fabric for the border as I had used for the sashing.  I searched everywhere within 2 states!  No luck, so I needed a Plan B - a rust color border to match the cornerstone patches I used in the sashing.  That worked!  

My next challenge was the binding.  I knew I wanted to machine bind this quilt and I prefer to use a flange binding when I machine bind.  I auditioned several fabrics for the flange and finally found one I liked and that matched the multi-colored squares.  And these were fabrics I already had in my stash!
  
So, the fabrics were chosen, the backing and binding were made, I had batting on hand.  Next step, make the quilt sandwich and quilt.  I once again used spray basting.  I love this method.  It takes no time at all, saves my back and my knees and really has no odor.  I have plenty of space in our garage and a very big table to use.  I should have this done in plenty of time to meet the end of month deadline right?  WRONG!   The bathroom plumbing had other ideas!  

We noticed a small water stain in our powder room ceiling and thought our upper guest bathroom had developed a leak which ended up ruining the ceiling of the downstairs powder room.  Our first thought we needed to replace the wax seal but our first step (after turning off the water) was to pull down the ceiling in the powder room.  That's when we found a pin hole in a copper water pipe. This took time to fix and plumbers to hire.  Despite the unplanned event, I was able to finish most of the quilt on April 30th.  I needed several hours on May 1st to complete the last part of the binding.  I did finish the project before the May project was posted so I consider this one a success!  



That's my story and I'm sticking to it!  


Four down, 8 to go!  The May project is a table runner.  The top is done, it needs backing, batting, quilting, binding.  Should be an easy finish but we all know that I have said that before!  We will see how this goes!  It's always an adventure!