And Now, Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Quilting

And yes, it IS another Sew-A-Row, this one for Moonlighters.

I nearly had a stroke when I got this one, having signed up to participate when it was a mere 12" Dresden Plate block. Little did I know that it would grow to be a 48 inch behemoth by the time it reached me! Not only that, the beautiful bright plaids from the center had not been carried out into the other borders, giving it a dull, country appearance which was OK, but not to my liking. The person before me added fans, but did not finish them as she had no buttonhole stitch on her machine. (Doh, pick another design!) Enough with the complaining. I knew what I needed/wanted to do immediately, but was mentally shirking from the job. All the way to Sisters in July and ever since then I'd been searching out bright plaids for the job, but found few.

Finally, I contacted the original block maker and she provided me with scraps of some of the fabrics used in the center and away I went. I happened to have a small piece of 30's red that exactly matched the center of the original plate, so I added that as a 1 1/2 inch separator and made 40 (count them forty) double flying geese 5 inch paper pieced blocks. I do adore the Electric Quilt, in which one can design a foundation for any block in any size and print the papers. I opted to paper piece for accuracy as I would rather take the time to do that than fool with getting them perfect the other way.

The meeting for distribution of the projects is September 20th and I'm really hoping to win this one. I've gone from hating it to being very attached to same. If I am the lucky winner, I may replace the black corner squares with additional double geese so they look like they are going around the quilt, like so. I would also finish the fans just inside the red border with stems and appliqued leaves to give them the appearance of flowers.

Sew, keeping my fingers crossed, I'll win it and get to realize my ambitions. If not, like all group projects, it was a great experience in that it forced me to stretch a bit, and I've come to realize that this kind of thing, rather than repetitious, block after block the same sewing is what really floats my boat and keeps me coming back to my Bernina for more.

What else could a girl ask for?