Thinking Outside the Block

It's finally done!  I've spent much of the past several weeks working fast and furious on this king-sized black and white quilt for our eldest son, Bryan.  It was WAY too big to put on my quilt frame so I had to wrestle with it on the dining room table, putting it away just long enough to serve Christmas dinner.  My shoulders were in knots so I kept borrowing Bryan's heat pack that he uses for his back.  That helped a lot.

Arranging the 144 blocks to sew them together presented a challenge.  My knees are too old to try to crawl around on the floor, so Scott and I put our heads together and built a design wall out of pvc pipe and flannel-backed tablecloths.  It stands 7 feet tall and 7.5 feet wide.  I could lean it against the hallway wall out of the way while I assembled the top.  Worked great until I realized I was too short for the top rows and had to get the stepladder.  (Santa Claus, alias Scott, built me my own little stepstool the day after X-Mas!)

The entire day after Christmas was spent stitching the binding.  I got it done just before Bryan got home from work.

I think he likes it.