finished pinning the “36” quilt last night. The night before I’d had to stop pinning, dip into my box of new safety pins, sit down and open them up to use. Wow! I don’t remember how long it’s been since I had to break out some new pins. There are probably a few small stashes of safety pins somewhere that I haven’t encountered but it was easier to just throw some new ones on the table.

So last night, I finished putting in pins and then closing them all. That means it’s time to get serious about how to quilt these two quilts. I had an idea on one and auditioned it with some thread but wasn’t thrilled with it. I may try that again but with a different color. I can hear Naomi typing as I’m typing this “you’re just going to quilt the hell out of it so just start already!” LOL and she’s so right.

I have previously done a couple quilts at once, so that part isn’t so strange. I am expecting a LOT of black thread dust etc. At least it’s easy to see.

I guess tonight I’ll throw some sample pieces together, wind a whole lot of black bobbins and do some sample quilting. My only question: how to denote bobbin count for two quilts – we’ll work it out somehow.

I managed to push through all the ironing – got both tops ironed and ready for layering. For the quilt with the little strips, it meant ironing the two halves, sewing the two halves together and then ironing the last seam (and re-ironing the whole mess). For the other quilt, it was just ironing, plain and simple.

Then – on to finding backing fabric. Figured that out, ironed it and sewed together the larger one. That brought me to relatively late last night so I went with layering the strip one because it was smaller and because I’m interested in protecting all those little seams. So that’s what I did while watching some really really lousy TV. Up to that point I’d seen some interesting things including The Seventh Veil.

I did get the smaller quilt all pinned and the pins closed. Tonight I’ll probably start with the other one. The latter has an earlier deadline if it were to be submitted somewhere and I do have a clue as to how to start quilting it. The other one, not so much, still pondering. Let the bobbin counting begin!