a sewing machine

You know how when you've been really busy doing something, you say you are a machine.  I've been a cleaning machine, an exercise machine, etc.  That expression doesn't work so well when what you've been doing is sewing.  Anyway, I've been a sewing machine lately, which is to say I've been busy.

I finally finished sewing the borders on the Happy Robot quilt for my son.  That's a lot of fabric to manipulate on your own.

 I'm really pleased with how I got the squares in the corners to line up perfectly.  I sewed on one piece of the rocket border and then trimmed the end once it was sewn on.  Then I took the next piece of rocket border and sewed the blue corner square to one end.  I took that piece and sewed it to the quilt and then trimmed the end of the rocket fabric even.  Repeat on the last two sides.  On the last side I stopped sewing about 6 inches from the end, trimmed the rocket fabric to size and sewed the blue corner square to it and finished sewing the border on.  It was so much easier than measuring a million times, cutting and sewing the border pieces independently only to have something end up the wrong size anyway.

Next I tackled the backing.  I was too cheap to go buy many, many yards of the coordinating fabric from the LQS.  So I hit J's with a 40% off coupon, to see what they had.  I was thinking a solid yellow, orange or blue, but they didn't have a perfect match and this yellow orangey stripe was actually cheaper. I got 8 yards which was everything on the bolt.  It's not a perfect match, but at $15 for 8 yards I can live with it.  I made a center stripe with the strip going perpendicular to the big pieces and used some scraps to piece the center.  I love a pieced back, the lady who does my quilting, not so much, but this is just a little and she'll live.

I'm not going to be around for the rest of the week.  My grandmother died Saturday and I'm flying to Ohio for her funeral.  I'm named for my grandmother and she taught me to needlepoint among other things.  It was her time to go, but she will still be sorely missed.

My grandmother was an amazing botanist, her home has thousands of daffodils and she could tell you the variety of every single one.  This is her at the daffodil show in 2005.  She always raised her hand like that when she was going to tell you one little thing.  At the time, I didn't think anything of having captured that motion, but now the photo is priceless, because it captures her as she lived and spoke.