Arrrgh!!!

I'm addicted to quilting. Not as addicted as most of the ladies in my bee, but addicted nevertheless. You've seen pictures of the blocks using Halloween fabrics and shades of orange fabric, in an earlier entry. I decided that I need to get that top put together to take to the Trunk Show I'll be doing for my sister's quilting group.

There's a lot to be said about taking an unquilted top to show. Quilters ALWAYS want to see the back of your work, to see if they measure up to you, or if maybe, just maybe, the back of their work looks even better than yours! *G* It's the nature of the beast. I'll be charitable, and tell you that some women look to learn how to do things better. I'm sufficiently confident about my work that it doesn't bother me that there are women who are better piecers and quilters than I am. If it helps a beginner quilter to know that she measures up to me, I'm glad to give her the boost.

There are things to be learned from the back of a quilt top. You can see if the quilter has given thought to pressing the pieces for flat assembly. You can see if the top was paper pieced, or you can look for markings that would indicate the pieces were cut from templates. You can see if the quilter has cleaned up the back, snipping threads leftover from sewing. And, of course, you can see if the top was pieced by hand or by machine. No doubt my more learned friends can glean even more information than that.

Most of the quilts I make use old-fashioned patterns with today's amazing variety of fabrics. I tend to like a scrap quilt look, so it's very rare when I use just five or six fabrics in a quilt. One of the last quilts I'll show is dark blue and gold, but I think there may be 24 different blue fabrics and 24 different gold fabrics in the top. I need to count them before I pack the quilt for the talk. I saw a blue and gold quilt in a magazine, and thought I had to have one like it. When I was done, I really wished I had a kid at a college that used blue and gold for their colors so I could send it away! It could have been worse. I could have made a blue and orange quilt, and everybody would comment on how great a Bears fan I am! *G*

Today I sewed together the 20 blocks that make up the center of the Halloween quilt. I used a one-inch green and black sashing to connect the blocks. The next step is to surround this rectangle with the same sashing. I may get that finished tonight. The next border is made up of two-inch strips of all the fabrics in the blocks, set at a 45 degree angle, and the last border will be black fabric with stars or pumpkins....whichever I can find at the shop this time of the year.

It's shaping up. Soon I'll have another picture to share. *S*