Distractions

Having made all 16 of the 16" blocks for my Insane Squares quilt, I have sashed two rows and have two more to do before putting the center together.  I bought some coordinating batik for the border and ought to get busy on that.  However, I felt I ought to work on two round robins first, one in the online group and the other for my local guild.  I finished a very simple "Hexies on the vine" border for Cindy's red, white, and black quilt yesterday.  The previous borders made the quilt quite busy, so I thought a simpler one would help give "the eye a place to rest," as my friend Paula says.  It's now ready to mail to the next person, which I'll do Monday.

Now it's on to Pat M's first border on a sweet rectangular center featuring a Japanese lady.  She included a whole lot of Asian prints with hers.  The problem is:  which shall I use?  I decided to make a simple hourglass block using quite a few of the prints since the background of her center is a plain off-white.   It shouldn't take me as long as Cindy's border since I'll do it all by machine.  First, though, I need to clean out my machine which has been running at top speed for a few weeks without cleaning.  I find it gets pretty linty with either Aurafil or Mettler threads, yet those work best for me.

After I finish Pat's border, I hope to finish the Insane Squares quilt early in the coming week.  I ordered some backing fabric and then have to decide where to take it for longarm quilting.  With all those squares, I think something curvy would look best.  Polly is happy with a new longarmer in NH, but there's also one in Fairlee who does nice work.  Since these folks are both new to me, I think I should talk to them face-to-face, an hour's drive in either case.