Another Finish--Zion's Year of the Bible and a return of the infamous OC!!!

Zion's Year of the Bible was finished up today at 2:30, JUST in time for my Mom's arrival at 3:00. Whew.....I wasn't sure if I was going to get it completed before she arrived since I took ALL DAY YESTERDAY OFF! I was so tired and just "lifeless" with no ambition to sew. I had one small section left to quilt today, and then put the three sections together. The pieces fit together okay, with a little bit of fudging needed.
I don't know about all of you, but I think binding a quilt is that part I like the least. It can be so putzy, depending of course on which method of binding being performed. I've done everything from *cheating* by folding the backing over the front edge and stitch (and vice-versa; folding front over the back edge and stitching). I've used what I consider the *traditional* binding method; where you sew the binding to the front and then hand-stitch it to the back. I must say I like the look of that one the best, but SO TIME CONSUMING!

I needed a QUICK method today, so I tried the method my mom usually uses; she *wraps* a binding strip around the edge of the quilt and then stitches through the top, while "catching" the edge underneath at the same time. This was the first time I've tried it, so I started by preparing the binding strips, and then began pinning (using safety-pins) to the quilt's edge. OMGoodness!!! Putzy again! Yeah, well, after 3 pins in place, I said...."uh-uh!".....and just took the whole thing to my machine and ended up *wrapping* as I went along. (Those are Caitlyn's feet and hands in the pic--she was handing pins to me.)

I must say, this method worked rather slick! It was quick and didn't cause me toooo many problems. There were two spots that I needed to re-stitch once I was finished and noticed that two spots didn't "catch" the back. Oh well......




Oh yes....and the corners were posing to be a bit difficult for me! The first one took me about 5 minutes to figure out, but then the other three went off without a hitch. The corners kind of reminded me of wrapping presents, where you kinda "fold over an already-covered" part. Kinda hard to explain......


The quilting was a simple stitch-in-the-ditch around each block, and then a travelling cross in the verticle sashings. Once again, due to the size of this quilt, I quilted this in three-sections and then pieced them together once finished. I haven't measured the final quilt, but it's BIG! I used 110"x110" batting, and used just about all of it! I'm guesstimating ~95"x105" (give or take a few inches.)

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The story behind the quilt: (feel free to fast-forward) back in 2004, my Mom's church youthgroup started a Year of the Bible and completed blocks at each meeting. I didn't measure the block sizes, but I'm estimating them to be about 8". Fabric paint was used to draw out scenes from certain books of the Bible. The piecing of the blocks started back in 2005 by my Mom, but....well....like most of us, other things started taking precidence, and the quilt ended up on the back burner.

Last Thanksgiving, while I was at my mom's working on a quilt for my niece, I noticed she had it out again. I don't know how much work she had put in to it, but it caught my attention, and besides, I needed a break from quilting my nieces quilt. I laid out what she had completed, asked her to verify the order of the blocks, and continued piecing where she left off. I ALMOST completed piecing the rows together when I ran out of thread, and NEEDED to hit the road to get home---it was getting late and I have a 3 hour drive home. I left the quilt laying out on her basement floor with hopes she would put the last rows together and then she had intentions of tieing it since it was going to be so large.

Yeah, well...on Sunday (5 days ago), while putting toys away at her house after our weekend visit, I noticed it folded on her shelf, NO MORE COMPLETED than when I left it last Thanksgiving. So......I grabbed it and stashed it in my bag without her knowing. I was HOPING to complete it by today since she was coming up to pick up the girls (they will be with her for the next two weeks).

This is my way of thanking her for her help the next two weeks, and besides, it was a great "gift" and helped me get one more finish for Peg's Challenge.
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Anyhoo------
now that I have THAT done, I felt awesome and inspired to get going on another WIP that has been sitting for a few weeks. THE ORANGE CRUSH is back.......I added one final green border and then started auditioning colors for a backing. I knew I needed to piece a backing because I wasn't going to buy speical yardage for it....so, I grabbed a white, a pinkish-orange, a drab cream/brown and another lt brown/orange stripey fabric. After laying them out in the big pieces I had (roughly 1/2 - 1 whole yard), I didn't like it. BUT, 10 inch squares sewn together ran through me head......

...so.........ironing........cutting.........sewing........AND being TWO BLOCKS SHY. UGH!
However, have no fear.......back to my stash I went, and I found a small piece of orange plaid JUST enough for two blocks! Can you believe it?!?!?!?
So.....here is the back....and I can't wait to HOPEFULLY check another off my list by the end of the day tomorrow, once I "get busy" quilting my OC.
Can you see the two Orange Plaid blocks???? How funny!

Happy quilting!