Two years in the making ....

 Back in 2020 the Fat Quarter Shop announced the Sewcialites quilt along. 

I thought "Hey, this will be great! I can totally keep up with one square a week."

But I was wrong. So very wrong. 

Oh, sure, I started out strong and did well for the first month.  Maybe. 

Then life happened, like it always does. Then I gradually fell behind.  If you are connected to my instagram account, you can track down the squares I shared photos of.  

I worked on squares, here and there, but didn't share most of them on any social media.  When I get that far behind on something, it's overwhelming.  Only that's not the right word.  It's hard to pull the project out and work on it. 

Sometime at the end of last year and the start of this year I decided I *was* going to finish it asap.  

You know what happened?  I didn't finish it asap.  

I dragged my heels. 

I pre-cut fabric for the squares and often messed up the measurements, which led to more frustration and putting the whole thing away. 

Deadlines were set, and promptly blown past. 

You know what I have learned. I do not do well with any kind of -along.  Well, I already knew that, but this really hammered that tidbit of knowledge home. 

Finally.  Eventually, I completed ALL the squares and sewed them together after I settled on a layout. 

I decided I really did not like the original layout suggestion.  I went looking through the groups and found a layout that I liked.  Then I decided to add a border. 

Then, the backing. In hindsight this may not have been the best idea, but I decided I was going to make it scrappy.  Shouldn't be hard, right? 

Well, me being me, I managed to make it hard. Earlier this year I had taken all my big scraps of fabric and cut them down to pre-cut sizes.  For some reason I decided that making the squares 9-inch was the way to go.  Which mean I had to trim down *everything.*

 This was when I first started laying out the squares for the backing. 

I eventually ran out of fabrics I thought would work together.  The backing wasn't big enough.  I broke down and purchased fabrics for the big squares and to make a border along all these squares. 

Finally, the backing is all sewn together.

Time to make the quilt sandwich. 

Thanks to the she shed, I have a space that I can lay everything out and be able to pin it together. No more getting the basting pins in the living room carpet. 

First step, lay down the backing. That is when I learned just how huge my backing is. 

It's fine, though.  Totally fine. 

I spent almost two hours pinning my quilt sandwich and the next day realized I had all kinds of pins and tucks going on. 

*Insert heavy sighs* Lots of heavy sighs. 

Funny how quick you can unpin a quilt sandwich. ... 

I pondered how to keep this from happening.  Then I remembered someone, somewhere, saying they use painters tape to keep everything down and prevent shifting. 

That is what I did.  I taped everything down. 

Success!

A few days later I finally started quilting it. Nothing fancy. Just some straight line quilting. Cause, after all this time, I wanted this quilt D-O-N-E, done!

Why yes, that *is* a new sewing machine. My husband found my dream machine and at a great price, and ordered it for my birthday a few months ago. Quilting this quilt was a *dream* thanks to all that throat space!

*ahem* 

Straight line quilting about an inch and a half apart.  The lines are straight-ish. 

Did I mention it was a dream to quilt on this machine? 

Once it was all done, I trimmed off the excess and discovered the backing wasn't as straight as I had hoped.  No biggie to me, though.  I think it looks kind of neat. 

So ... I suppose you are wondering what it looks like all complete. 

It looks awesome! 

To da!

The back

I'm happy with how it turned out, overall.  I'm *thrilled* that it's finally complete.  Probably in time for the next sewcialite quilt along to be announced. You know what I won't be doing? Sewcialite 2. 

It's fun to sew blocks I probably wouldn't attempt or feel are above my skill set, but I just can't keep up on these longer -alongs. 

Course, if I'm not seeing anything on social media, I won't feel like I'm falling behind on anything. 

In any case, I have quite a few projects in the queue I'd like to make and I never fall short on projects. No one will notice I'm not participating. 

In other news, or daily chit chat, I met the work deadline, with little time to spare.  At the last minute my internet decided to crap out on me. It was taking ages for emails to send and files to load.

The day started with a red sky which immediately turned into grey clouds.  It rained a soft rain for a good chunk of the day.  I decided today was the day to make a copy cat Starbucks lemon loaf.  The recipe called for mini loafs. That was too fussy, I decided, so it's being made in a regular bread pan. 

The evening will probably be a quiet one. When weather is like this, I don't have much enthusiasm to do anything. I keep telling myself the rain is very much needed for the garden.