Hourglasses for the Whirligig
Today I’ve been having a real effort to get the hourglass blocks finished for the pieced outer border of the Whirligig quilt (from Carrie Nelson‘s Miss Rosie’s Spice of Life Quilts book – which I can’t recommend too highly as it’s wonderful!!). I can’t say I was jumping for joy at the prospect of a lot of fiddly piecing, but the weather is lousy again (so no garden work is possible) and I just love this quilt and want to see it finished!
The blocks are almost done and then I have to sew them into strips and then onto the quilt top. The blocks on the left side made with two small and one large triangle solve the ‘how to go round the corner’ problem very elegantly! I can’t wait to see what the finished top will look like. Hopefully in a day or two I’ll be able to show it off!
Then I really am going to send it away to have it machine quilted. I’ve never done this before and it already feels a little like handing a precious child into unknown hands, but otherwise I just can’t see me a) being able to machine-quilt it myself, or b) having the time to hand-quilt it. I’m a really fussy hand-quilter – the stitches have to be teeny tiny and if I say so myself, my hand-quilted quilts are pretty good – but it takes me forever and right now I’m just itching to do so many other things. So I’m going to take a couple of very deep breaths and put my trust in the hands of hopefully a reputable machine-quilter (I don’t know who yet, but I have a couple of possibles who I will contact in the next few days). It feels scary, but I guess life is about taking risks sometimes!!
Wishing you a peaceful afternoon!
Helen
P.S. We’re still recovering from last night at our house – the euphoria of watching Switzerland beat the mighty Spaniards in the World Cup was something to behold. The whole country went crazy. My 11 year old even went to school this morning draped in a red and white Swiss flag! Sometimes miracles do happen!
