I gave myself a deadline of May to finish my quilt, so I thought it high time to show some more progress pictures (I get giddy at the recordkeeping aspect of blogging).
Not looking all that done is it? I'm not looking for props here, really. Just sharing what it looks like today. I have patiently basted, basted, and when I thought I'd basted enough...I basted some more (that's the contrast thread for anyone unsure). I got suggestions from you guys about backing it with a king-sized sheet (remember when I had that backing dilemma??). At first I thought, nah, can't do it, it wouldn't be big enough. If quilting how-to books tell you that your backing has to start out bigger than your quilt top, in Blair's world it would need to a lot bigger than the quilt top. It took a while until it occurred to me to buy a king sized sheet and a twin sized sheet to add adequate room for the total size, geez! After searching around for a sheet sale, for about $30 later, I have myself a nice robin's egg blue solid quilt backing. Whew! How long would it have taken me to figure that one out without you? Too long I fear. I'm apparently too close to this project to apply the needed "stand 10 ft away and squint" mentality.
The neatest part (for me anyway) is the tiny off-white quilting stitches in the first photo. I am entirely new to hand quilting. A real rite of passage for me. I am sure I will, after 36 17" handquilted squares later, have refined this skill. This will be excellent sitting and watching TV stitching.
Now, for rambling about the other details of our bedroom, where this quilt will eventually live. The room itself is very....well....er...beige. Khaki beige. This is a tough color for me, but its a lot of room to repaint, so I've managed to work around my dislike. So, on to what goes with beige. Easy you say? Hmmmmm, let's just say our unconscious color choices led us to add....more beige. Why? Because Peter and I can't ever agree on anything decor-wise and should probably live in separate houses on the same patch of land for this very reason.
We are not beige people. We are colorful, happy, peppy even, at times. Not...beige. (In a bit of defense of beige, I've seen it work very well when intended to ground or frame a room.) We have managed to add nice color to all the other rooms of our house, but our bedroom has been neglected. Till now. In addition to our quilt, what has turned into the great bedroom redo of 2006 has started already with new curtains to frame our really bland (but nice enough) roman shades. There are 6 windows in this room, three are grouped together. That's a lot of off-white canvas roman shade-ness. I consulted stylist extraordinaire Alicia. She has the yummiest curtains in her beautiful room, so we conversed a bit. I've never found anything...anything at all that felt like the right thing to add whatever these windows needed (in 5 years of looking and pondering). She suggested going to Urban Outfitters and look at their cotton bedspreads. Eureka!
A quick trip to Urban and nagging asking Peter to help hang, I now have a lovely set of curtains from two $34 bedspreads. The pillow is new too, originally it was two $4 cotton napkins from Anthropologie. I think this is only its temporary home, I'm already thinking brighter color is needed here. I will keep you posted on my progress.
What would I do without you guys to consult on these dilemas??

















