Rome Wasn't Built In A Day

...but our quilt was.

That's a picture of it laid out on the floor before I started sewing it into strips. I had the unfortunate experience of learning to 'ease in' so I wouldn't have puckers. Basically, when the lady cut my large squares, they were just the tiniest bit off, so to get my corners to match I would have had puckers. I got to learn how to make sure I didn't. Ten long strips of pinning and sewing to make sure. It was tedious, but I suppose a lesson well learned.

There is a group at our church called Far Above Rubies. It's based on Proverbs 31:10, "Who can find a virtuous wife? For her worth is far above rubies." There are several activities during the year for the moms and daughters to do together, most of them not being this extensive. There were four sets of moms and daughters who participated and made a quilt on Saturday. Here are the girls in front of a (gasp) Michigan sports team quilt for one of the dads.

And have you ever seen shoes like these? We did find out they zip in the back to get them off and on.

Sparky had no desire to use the sewing machine, so she ironed all day. Chatty sewed some and ironed some. It was the first time for Chatty to use a sewing machine. She would have been happy if she'd gotten to do more, but time was an issue, as was the whole easing in thing.

Here is the actual birthing of our quilt (I just couldn't bring myself to use those words in the post title). It was amazing to see it rolled up, stuck through the opening, and then unrolled into the nearly finished quilt. You know something though...before I sewed all these layers together I had to pin all the way around the edge every inch so it wouldn't pucker. All the way around except for the roughly two foot opening, which didn't seem to make much of a difference when the entire thing was somewhere between 90-100 inches on each side. I was certainly glad when that pinning was done, and there wasn't a pucker in sight.

At this point all that had to be done was stitching all the way around the edge and ties through the middle to hold all the layers together. It was a full 12 hour day, but definitely worth it. Chatty said at one point, "You know, we could make a quilt every weekend."

No, Chatty, I don't think so.