Summer Hump Day

This is officially the middle of "summer".  Mind you, I hate to think that summer is more than half over, as I completely live for the heat and sunshine, the beach and all things outdoors, but today marks 5 weeks since the kids got out of school and 5 weeks until they start again.  Soon, I may see the light at the end of the tunnel.  It will be that of a sewing machine...

I have been piecing and diddling for an hour in the early mornings before the kids get up, and doing a little bit of hand applique in the evenings, but little to no longarming.  The winter and spring were very busy with client quilts, but summer has fizzled.  It has given me time to work on my own projects in whatever time I have had, but no money to do anything fun!  Next week my boys are off to another week of day camp.  In preparation for having some alone time (Little Miss will be attending Nana Camp for a few days), I have been trying to get this monster quilt (it's 102") onto the frame.  I put it away in January when I discovered a bazillion other bloggers were making scrappy modern Dresden quilts too.  Seriously, I started this in the spring of 2011, long before everyone else started theirs.  I love to take traditional patterns and rework them. I was saddened and disgusted that my idea was not original, and that it seemed 2012 was the year of the Dresden.

I do have a couple other quilts in the piecing stage, but not close enough to actually quilt.  As of last week, this only lacked adding 4 Dresdens, stitching down the spikey border that started as a prairie point concept, and prepare the backing.  The backing is now ready.  Found some fantastic SSI fabric for $4 per yard.  It takes a scary amount of fabric to back a king sized quilt.  I now need to hand stitch only 2 more Dresdens, and stitch down 1/8 of the outer border.  Today, I even started clipping away the backing fabric from behind the appliques (nearly 8 ounces of excess fabric to be exact!).  Looks like this needs a real good pressing, but  never fear, it is really flat, and should quilt just fine.

Despite all of the Dresdens being hand stitched, I lazied-out and opted to invisible machine applique the prairie points down.  I decided that I hated the floppy look, but the border needed the points.  In hindsight, which usually bites me in the ass after quilt shows, I know I should have just pieced these - they'd have been crisper, and would have had better matches, but then.  Part of me says that I am just quilting this for my bed, while the other part of me doesn't know how to not make it into a show quilt.  

I have a number of quilting sketches done.  I think I am ready to start the quilting next week.  I do have 3 baby quilts to do first, however, as well as make 2 bags fro quilts that need to be delivered to the Maine Quilt Show this weekend.  That's procrastination for you...If I could just purchase 2 30" bags, rather than waste my own valuable time making them, you know I would!