I can't believe it, but I actually got my One Monthly Goal project for November done. And it's not even the end of November yet. There were times that this project seemed insurmountable. The first two weeks of November were really busy with appointments and preparing for the FLL competition. I was sick a good part of last week. So I really had to work hard the last few days to pull this one off.
Here is my finished Pink Grapefruit top (pattern by Coleen Merte of Northwater Quilts). I started this project on November 6. The fabrics I used include Moda Bella Solids Kelly and Sapphire, Kona White, Cotton + Steel Netorious in Velvet Sky, green with arrows by Riley Blake, unknown green print, unknown green text, green polka dot from JoAnn, Architextures Blueprint text, and one of my favorites, Market Plants by Paula and Waffle for Dear Stella.
I found this to be a pretty challenging top. The pieced blocks were really easy, but I found the orange peel blocks to be pretty intense. I made sure that my stitching was barely visible when sewing down the peels, but when I actually joined the blocks, many of them became extremely visible. That was disappointing. I'm thinking I'll need to quilt right along the edge of each peel to hide them.
I ripped a lot of seams and stitching lines on this one. There is one block intersection that I redid at least six times. There are quite a few imperfections. I think the overall impression is okay though. I should note that I did change a bit of the orange peel layout to make it a bit more symmetric.
Now I just have to iron a serious amount (around seven yards, I think) of backing fabric.
And decide on a quilting plan. That is a goal for another month though.
Be sure to click the link below to find others' OMGs.
Linking with For the love of geese.
Our FLL (FIRST Lego League) team, Something to do with Waffles, competed at their regional qualifying tournament on Saturday. It's a long day, full of hurry up and wait scenarios. We had what I feel is our best Core Values performance ever, an okay project presentation, and our robot did really well. We ended up with two second place awards in robot design and robot performance. We also placed second overall (out of 21 teams), and will compete at the State competition in December. We are taking a much needed two-week break and then will do a few more practices before the competition date.
After recovering from that, I started working on my One Monthly Goal project, my Pink Grapefruit quilt. I made all the orange peel wedges the other night.
Yesterday I started working on my layout. Here's where it is so far, though I think I have a few more changes to make before I start sewing everything down. I want to make at least one more green wedge. One row at the bottom is also missing at the moment.
At the same time, I was quilting one of my own projects. I hesitate to show this, but in the spirit of keeping it real, here it is. I made my backing and loaded it a few days ago. Yesterday I loaded the top and got to work. Then I got to the last row, scrolled my fabric, and discovered that my backing is too small.
So I will be driving to the store where I purchased the backing fabric in a bit and hoping for the best. Lesson learned. Always double-check before loading. I do want to take a moment to say that I always lay out customer quilts on the floor to see how everything works out before I even think of loading. I skipped that step on my own, and see what happened? I should have known better, because after I washed it, it had lost a quarter yard of length. I never even thought about checking how much width it lost.
Here's hoping your sewing is going better than mine currently is.
Linking with My Quilt Infatuation and For the love of geese.
