I'm a Lucky Gal

I have never had the luck of the Irish whatsoever until this year, and day by day, month by month, I am constantly surprised at what riches come my way. It is truly surreal and unbelievable. I'm over the moon with excitement.

A month or more ago, I submitted my story to HandiQuilter about how I came to buy one of their machines. They were holding a contest. They were going to select 15 people from their stories, and bring them to their company for a 3 day retreat. Did I say that this retreat is in Salt Lake City??! I had just returned home from the Maine Quilt Show, and was still pretty psyched about seeing this year of my life come full circle. I wrote my story that night.

Tonight while I was doing the drudgingly dull task of making dinner (Oh, how I dislike cooking on Fridays!), I got the call. My story was selected, and I am going to the quilting retreat next month!! Boy am I excited - and it is a paid trip too! I have one small logistic of getting someone to cover my college class either one or 2 days, but, hey...they've yet to get me a contract so anything is fair game now in my book. I can hardly wait to hear from the HQ contact to find out what I might learn/do on the retreat. I'm seriously dying to learn some machine maintenance (considering that is where my beauty is going next week, for a little R&R & deep oiling).

So what is a quilting blog without some quilting, you ask?...Here's Nearly Insane #1 all quilted. Believe it or not, it is a continuous pattern, even on the sashings. This is (as if it is not apparent from the next picture), the absolute largest quilt I can do. It is So wide that I cannot move the machine off from the quilt on either side. Dictated by the size of the backing, anyhow, which was about 135"x135". Who, I ask you, really has a bed that big??! Yvette does absolutely the most intricate piecing I have ever seen. Some of these 6" blocks have over 100 pieces. The quilting was really quite hard - the fabrics are mostly rather busy, and seeing my thread was challenging.
And layed out in my hallway (which can house a twin without folding easily), here is one half...

...and here's the other half. ENORMOUS! I shutter to think about the shipping!

I did a continuous swirling and feathering pattern in the outer borders (totalling 18"!) and a more structured leaf & swirl in the white border, where it shows more.

It's so pretty. And very heavy thanks to the ton of seams.

Here's some peeks at the blocks - Count the pieces...

I like this star. And the basket too.

It's just Completely Insane, I tell you. There's no Nearly about it! Yvette has actually made a 2nd one of these too. Imagine that! And oh, any guesses on how many yards of thread it takes to quilt a 13924 square inch quilt???

answer: about 4500 yards!