Today, I am pushing myself. And apparently I'm making it as hard on myself as possible. Most quilters, I'm guessing, know the dimensions of their quilts. I've usually got some vague idea myself -- if I make twenty-five six inch blocks, I'll probably have a quilt that's around thirty inches square. Or I can look at the pattern and subtract the width of the borders I left off.




But it's been a very long time since I messed with the Sparkling Gems top and I have no clue where the pattern itself is. I've never made a quilt that needed more than a flat sheet to back it, so I wasn't even thinking that the full sheet I bought last week would be too small. But it was, by two or three inches. The other sheets in my stash weren't big enough, either. At least not the ones that I thought would work with this quilt. I didn't check the others. And I was going to be extremely mad at myself if I couldn't use the sheet I wanted after I spent five bucks on it. So I took the two pillow cases that came with it and pieced my sheet to make it big enough.

My batting wasn't big enough either, which is extra maddening because I'd had the right size in my hands in the store and walked from the checkout line to the back of the store to get a smaller one because I didn't need a queen size. I don't make quilts that big. Except for this one. I did have a the right size up in the sewing room, which I'd bought to cut into fourths for quilts in sizes I do actually make.

(There's still not a big enough space to lay out a queen size quilt on my floor, not even if I move furniture, but I've probably whined about that enough times already.)

The plan was to try a technique I read about on Quiltville chat and cut the batting in half, then baste and quilt half of the quilt, then add the rest of the batting and quilt that half. I don't remember making the decision to pin baste the entire thing. The quilts are making their own decisions or I'm channeling whatever housewife lived here when the house was first built in 1920, or I don't know what else, but I did not decide to try quilting a queen size quilt on my Janome.

Guess that means that I don't get the credit now that it seems to be actually working! I started in the middle and made my way out to one corner, and if I could get one quarter of it done, the other three quarters should also be possible. I've already accepted that it's probably going to have pleats and tucks, but all of my quilts seem to have a few of those, so that's not big deal.

Doess this mean I don't have to wait for longarm time to get my quilts finished -- unless I want to?