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The quilt that my friend asked me to make for her son's graduation is now in the hands of the long arm of the quilting law - my friend Kathy. I actually finished it a couple of weeks ago, but Kathy couldn't work on it until after May 5th when she finished a quilt for her nephew. After that she was not available until May 11th for me to drop it off, at which time she informed me that she will not touch it until Monday the 16th. This was very disappointing to me as Diane wanted the quilt by the 17th. After Kathy is done, I still need to sew on the binding, which is time consuming. While I machine-sew the binding to the top of the quilt, I then hand-sew the binding to the back. Obviously I will not make the deadline of the 17th. Diane is understanding, thankfully, but I definitely want to get it to her by the graduation date, which is the 20th.

It would have been fantastic to get the quilt back from Kathy by today as Jim is gone on a motorcycle training trip this weekend. I could have sewed to my heart's content, and made the deadline. Also, on Sunday afternoon we go to Chicago to pick up Katie and all her crap. We will not get back to St. Louis until late Monday night. So if I get the quilt from Kathy on Tuesday I will really have to hustle to get it completed. I may be calling my sister over to have her help me with the hand-sewing. She said she wouldn't mind, and she wants to see Katie sometime during the short four day time period she will be in St. Louis.

Next Saturday Katie flies to Prague for a five week marketing class with 13 other students and two professors from Columbia College. They will be working with a marketing company in Prague on the Oreo cookie campaign. Apparently Oreos are not big sellers in Czech Republic, and Nabisco wants to change that. What a fun account to work on!

So in the meantime, with nothing to sew, Kirby and I are holding down the fort. I guess I will go back to working on my e-book. Sew natural...

That was an old adage my mom used to throw out when I was learning to sew. I've gotten a lot of mileage (or should I say yardage?) out of it over the years. Over the weekend I came up with a modification of mom's words of wisdom. Measure twice, buy once. I have been working on the graduation quilt I am making for my friend's son. She helped me pick out 26 of the fabrics initially, though I need 73 different fabrics all together. I finished shopping on my own. I have all 70 squares cut and sewn with their borders attached. The next step is a purple fabric for the sashings, which is what joins the squares together. Diane had helped me select this particular fabric, and it quickly became clear to me on Sunday that I was not going to have enough to do all the squares. Crap!

Knowing that Jackman's was having a Super Bowl sale, I rushed up there hoping to be able to buy 3 more yards of the fabric. They only had 2 yards left. Double crap! I made an executive decision to change to a different purple, one that has a suggestion of tie-dye effect to it. I think it will mesh nicely with the 70 different novelty prints in the quilt, and it blends with the purple border already around each square. (Purple is the graduate's favorite color, in case you couldn't tell.) Now I get to cut 280 strips 9" x 2". Yippee! My least favorite part of quilting is all the cutting. My wrist hurts thinking about it. Maybe if I had a decent layout table it would help. Instead I am either hunched over on the floor cutting, or bending over a table that is too short.

Maybe my retirement home will have the perfect craft room???