How big for a King?

 Ooooh, Alycia posted a GREAT thinkler this morning:  How big does a king size quilt really need to be?

And heaven knows I needed a little push to finish tidying "his side" of the bedroom (he'll forgive me later once I help him put everything back 😜), but truly... I've sometimes wondered how big/small is TOO big/small for a bed?

We have a California King; repurposed an old waterbed frame years ago for a GREAT deal since the lower drawers weren't salvagable.  Hubby's a tall guy at 6'6", so the extra length has been beneficial for his longer legs.  And he INSISTS on untucking the sheets on his side at the foot of the bed.  

Google gave me the following sizing:

and I'm thankful the Queen size is also included because a couple of the quilts I grabbed to test investigate this question currently rest on our queen in the guest bedroom (ie: formerly known as Caitlyn's room)

Now, interestingly enough, when I measured our mattress, it was closer to 70" x 82" and 12" deep.

So, here's some sizing for you...

Celtic Solstice - 110" x 110"
(Bonnie K. Hunter's 2013 mystery)

Celtic Solstice reside on our bed most of the time, however with the warmer summer months now, and after a deep clean of the bedroom a couple weeks ago, she's currently folded up and resting.  She fits our bed the best of all the quilts you'll see; a true king-size quilt.  She does sometimes begin falling off the end of the bed, but also that often happens due to the clothing that was lazily tossed at the close of a day.  Ya know, the clothing that isn't quite dirty, but no longer clean enough to be placed back in the closet.  Please tell me you do this too! And although he doesn't admit it, hubby kicks the sheets and quilt, and I'll often waken with the quilt draping over and off MY foot corner of the bed, dangerously threatening to slide free completely.

I digress...

Roll Roll Cottonboll - 95" x 110"
Bonnie K. Hunter's 2010 mystery

Currently, Roll Roll Cottonboll resides on the bed.  Length-wise, she's great.  Width-wise, she's certainly lacking.  And remember, when I measured my mattress width, it showed closer to 70" than the published 72", which is even more narrow that the standard king at a published 76".

Orca Bay - 84" x 93"
Bonnie K. Hunter's 2011 mystery

Wanting to see how some other quilts fit... Orca Bay was grabbed from the queen guest bed for a fitting.
Hmm... t'would defintely say "nope."  Much too small despite being 14" wider and about 11" longer than my measured mattress.  She fits lovely on the queen bed, however.

Candace's Stars (Granny's Stars) - 76" x 94"
appeared in July/August 2009 Love of Quilting

Awww, what a favorite.  I'm mean, c'mon!... what FUN to dig back through the blog to find when this one was completed:  July 2, 2009.  Candace was only THREE, and now... recently graduated and off on her way to a degree in Finance.

Again, I digress...
Most certainly too small for a king, and she sometimes rests on the queen.  Decently comfortable on the queen bed.

Smith Mountain Morning - 80" x 89"
Bonnie K. Hunter

This is one of my more recent finishes (2022!) ((Have I said how happy I am to be BACK in action now?  Back to blogging, back to quilting dedication, just.... back!)). 
I was shocked at how SMALL she looks on the king!  I thought for sure she'd be a better fit, but clearly... nopers.  However, she'd probably work well on the queen, however she was lovingly folded back up for... shrug!  I dunno.  But she's folded and ready for... whenever.

Those are the only larger quilts I grabbed for this little experimentation.  
So, Alycia...yeah.  I now can quite literally see why quilts are pushing the 100+" dimensions for king size.  I mean, even Roll Roll extending by ~25" beyond the measured width of the mattress still barely fits.
If I had to choose the perfect size for our bed/mattress... hmmm..... I wouldn't design it smaller than 100" square, nor larger than 110" square.

Meaningful morning, for sure!

Some final touches

Four quilts get 100% COMPLETELY marked off now.

Splendidly Marching Along and Transitions only needed labels to be complete. SMA will be sent to Alycia as soon as Maltese Star gets finished (my next to be loaded on the frame). Transitions will be in the hands of a new owner by the end of this week as she heads off to college.

Hopscotch needed binding; I had LOADS of this burgundy in my 2.5" strip drawer; NO IDEA where it was from???? But, used most of it :0) FINISHED!

Despite having had Roll, Roll Cottonboll marked off as" finished" in May, it still needed binding as well as a label even though it had been living on our bed :0). So, using some yellow and blue 2.5" strips from the drawer....it's FINISHED!

Feels good having those putzy tiny finishing tasks DONE! ;0)

Check
Check
Check
and
Check!

4 hours - 2 finishes (RRCB & RS)

Roll Roll Cottonboll
Resting at its new location - my bed

Raven Stars
In time for the Awards ceremony on Tuesday.

Change of plans; it's raining.

We headed up to the Farm for part of the weekend in order for DH to till up his parent's garden.  The 1.75 hour drive was gloriously beneficial Saturday morning because I was able to grade all of my Math 8 projects!  Which meant--the entire weekend was OPEN FOR BUSINESS in all other areas :0)

I plowed through two romance novels and am now beginning one of the latest Stephen King books:  Duma Key. At one time (end of high-school/early college years), I had nearly the complete collection of all Stephen King books. Huge fan here! And then, one summer after my first few years of teaching, I sold the whole lot at a garage sale. I was ready to pass them along.

Anyway----

we arrived home yesterday afternoon and I dutifully started laundry; cooking dinner and cleaning up the kitchen. We had all intentions of tilling our garden spots one final time before planting it today (Monday).....

but...

The thunder boomers have detoured our plans.

SO!!!!

Ya know what that means?!?!?!!?

Roll, Roll, Cottonboll, Here I come! You WILL see a finish today.

Almost done!

Almost done with School!
Almost done with RRCB!
Almost done with Harry Potter!

Not a bad list! And once completed.....then.......***I hope*** watch out quilting world! Amy will be back! :0)

School countdown: 8 days (4 this week; 4 next week).

RRCB count-down: ALMOST there! This has been the LONGEST a quilt has ever been on my frame! :0( But a little bit more time devoted to it this past weekend and the end is in sight---literally :0) See that lil' bit left hanging. I just couldn't do anymore over the weekend with Graduation parties scattered here-n-there. I'm thinking one more "good" hour, though, and I can check off the quilting and MAYBE the binding :0)

But clearly....this "slump" from quilting and other things has come from....

Harry Potter!

It's Harry Potter's fault! I suppose, actually, it's J. K. Rowling's fault! Back on March 4th, I started the series for one reason or another. It was time, I guess. I moved through the first few books rather quickly, then.....they got BIG! And time-consuming!!! Reading those books take easily hours and hours each (umm....20 hours running-time for the Deathly Hallows audiobook, to give you an idea).....that's a lot of time! I've been reading all of them with much of my free evening hours and some weekend hours which doesn't leave a super-lot of time extra.

Well folks...I'm ALMOST done with that too! I simply could not keep my eyes open anymore last night, and I was sooooooo close!! Less than 20 pages left....UGH!  However, TONIGHT I will know Harry's conclusion. I can't wait ;0)

With summer nearing....I took a gander around to see what some of the "Summer To-Do List" tasks were going to be.

Ugh!!! I can't STAND clutter! I HOPE to pull myself away from gardening and quilting long enough to De-Clutter and CLEAN/ORGANIZE the basement (since much of it is designated 'quilting area').
Also, along those lines.... 

ONE FOR-SURE Summer-project: Complete the basement bathroom. Nothing has been started other than a little bit of plumbing.  No flooring.  No fixtures.  No walls.  Kinda like my quilting space last summer.


Ahhh.....a much nicer "non-clutter" picture! I HOPE to make it a daily goal this summer to have the dishes and counter clean and tidy. I am SO bad at doing dishes daily! There are some nights where I simply don't care if they are cleaned or not. **pointing to self** Lazy!

Another FOR-SURE Summer-project (and most likely the FIRST-to-be-done project) is to paint the girls' bedrooms according to their choices. I can foresee next weekend already being when we start and maybe finish this project.

And, of course, we have our ever-growing garden(s) to stay on top of all summer. We have the "main" upper garden that will house most of our veggies. However, my lovely DH has tilled up two additional spots for "extension gardens"; loads of sweet-corn being planned; loads of potatoes; loads of tomatoes for canning. This weekend is Memorial weekend, which is "planting weekend" for many northern Wisconsin and Minnesotan folk :0) However, we will be heading to the farm to help DH's parents with their garden.  BUT,  I have requested to be home Sunday evening so we can work on our own garden on Monday.

So....with 8 days of school left.....summer plans are already on my mind.  I will make it.  I will make it. :0)

A lil' quilting and a whole lotta family

HELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLOOOOO!
I read over some blogs this AM, but definitely have not caught myself up completely. I don't know exactly what has been keeping me away; ... "life priorities" (??) I guess??

So to start, for those of you mainly curious in my quilting life......here's the quilting update.

Sorry :0(

Nothing much new to share.

However, I finally broke down and coughed up $50 to buy a laser stylus for the frame instead of using the jimmy-rigged device I had taped together for the past year. RRCB still awaits on the frame, and I did quilt one more pass to try out the stylus when it arrived this week. I MAY spend some time with it this weekend to finish it up. Dunno.

Most of my time over the past two weeks (weekends) has been splitting and stacking wood. Recall the "before" pictures from two (COLD and WINDY!) weekends ago (left). Last weekend, Sunday, Cassie and I finished up MOST of the splitting and stacking, minus a few TOO-BIG trunk cuts. By the time we were wrapping up, I didn't have enough energy left to lift these heavy stumps (pictured right), so they'll (hopefully) get finished today with DH's help. The wood pile is 4-stacks deep; I am VERY thankful for Cassie's help last weekend. Oh....and the weather was MUCH nicer :0) Enough to get "some sun" on my face :0)

Since we had finished up by 4:00, we still had some time (in my mind) to get some work done before completely closing up the weekend workshop. Therefore, Cassie and I transplanted some of the house plants and some of the flowers we had purchased from the FFA Mother's Day sale.

After Grandma's funeral service last week, the family (with a little push from myself and my sister) stayed in their "good clothes" a bit longer than originally planned in order to get family pictures.





So, TODAY and this weekend:

1) Call Brielle to see if she can come over for a play-date with Candace. Goal: one hour of transplanting seedlings to larger containers and then they can play.

2) Act as DH's assistant as he "putzes" outside with a) fencing blueberry bushes and the strawberry patch; b) cutting more wood logs down to splitting size; c) other.....

3) Quilt RRCB????? I still dunno. I'm in a bit of a quilting slump as Spring duties are beginning to take precedence. BUT.....THREE MORE WEEKS until Summer vacation. AND, I'd like to have you know....I had NOT started counting until Angela (soscrappy) emailed me the other day to say she was down to "8 days, but not that I (she) was counting....".

Officially; 14 days left for Shell Lake, WI. NOW, my countdown has begun.

RRCB and more family moments

This is the LARGEST quilt I've had loaded on my frame to date. Yesterday morning, Roll Roll Cottonboll took an hour to load onto the frame, and I'm not left with much "wiggle room" on the ends.

I finished up a few passes before heading upstairs to replenish my coffee, and I never made my way back down. It was 11:00 and DH commented that he was going to head outside to cut some logs that had been sitting for a few months (in the way). And for some crazy wacky reason, I thought that sounded like a GREAT way to spend my Sunday afternoon.

As you can tell by the pictures...we were having LOVELY Spring weather (cough-cough). Cold, Rainy, and Windy! The girls were set up with a small job of picking up wood scraps and placing them into the bucket of the tractor.

DH was cutting the load of smaller branches into sizable pieces to be given to his father.

And with Buster, our dog looking on...

...I had the station of wood splitting with the hydraulic splitter. Can you see my bunny-ear hat sticking out of my hoodie sweatshirt? Yeah, quite miserable outside, BUT when dressed for the weather AND working on a task, the weather truly wasn't that terrible.

I wanted to blog all of this last night, but quite honestly.....after five hours of splitting, hauling and stacking.....and a warm dinner of chili....and a cleansing bubble bath......after sitting in the glider, I was OUT COLD in a few moments! POOOOPED out!

;0)

Slight aches and pains today....but all worthwhile.

Roll Roll Cottonboll top done; Hopscotch started

Measuring at 95" x 110", Roll Roll Cottonboll top is complete. It's big. Very big. And will be perfect for my our king-size bed. I'm not sold on the 4.5" blue outer border, but I didn't want to stay-stitch around the edge of the quilt in order to pin it to my frame. One thing for sure...I am GLAD I have a frame that will fit this baby! I actually measured the length of my frame---about 125". So, I'll be able to load this sideways to reduce as much bulk as possible on the take-up bar.

Like I said yesterday....a little bit here and a little bit there....and the top just slowly came together. Once those string blocks and the HSTs were complete, it sped up a bit, but still probably the most time-consuming quilt top I've ever made to date.

With some downtime last night, I pulled out Bonnie's Adventures with Leaders and Enders book to see if there was a perfect pattern for the 4-patches I tidied yesterday. Sure enough....



So, I started pulling scraps from my 1.5" box. {{The pattern calls for 2" strips, but I modified it to fit the smaller 4-patches I had pieced.}} These blocks will finish at 6", and I don't have any preset notion of how large I'll make this quilt. I don't have any yellow/cheddar/orange as suggested in Bonnie's pattern, but I have had this copper fabric in my stash for over a year. I think it may be the ticket; definitely will be ideal for a boy/male/gentleman's quilt.

I haven't included any numbers of these blocks into my stash report yet. I'll wait until I have all the blocks pieced. But, I did add a bit (removed a bit) due to adding the borders to RRCB and the baby quilt I pieced last week.

Stash Report: March 21 - April 3
Used/week: 3.875 yds
Purch/week: 0.0 yds

Used/year: 46.625 yds
Purch/year: 11.0 yds

Net Used: 35.625 yds

Happy Sunday.

RRCB and family moments

Bit by bit, I'm amazed at how Roll Roll Cottonboll is coming together! I have one seam remaining in order to have the top center completely pieced, but lunch was past due and then an afternoon nap simply was too irresistible to pass up, so I haven't gotten back down to finish it up.

I actually started the day tidying up the sewing room a little bit; clearing the dust and sorting through my box of 1.5" squares; twosies and 4-patches...

The twosies I had pieced over the past year here-n-there were pressed and set up next to my machine to just "be there" as needed.

As I pieced the RRCB rows together, I was able to add a few more 4-patches to my box. No plans for these so far, but maybe I'll need to look through Bonnie's books to see if there would be a perfect pattern to use them up in.

To all of you who posted suggestions about my struggling student situation, I appreciate it. Through a few different changes, classroom life was quite bearable and enjoyable Thursday and Friday. A newly formed seating chart helped.....and my overall attitude and patience also helped.

I received some shocking and saddening news on Thursday. A classmate passed away unexpectantly while on the operating table earlier this week. I haven't seen her in many years, but we hung around together in a small click of friends while going through high school. She married her high school sweetheart, Andy; also a "bud" of the click of friends.

The news was completely shocking. The news was completely saddening. And as I read over her Facebook page posts Thursday evening, my heart just began aching and the tears started flowing. Life is precious. I have so much empathy for Andy and simply don't like imagining what a life-altering change this week has been for him and their two beautiful young children.

That night...my family was enjoyed! I hugged my children! I kissed my husband. I said "I love you" over and over. We laughed and enjoyed every moment we had together before bed time. And once bedtime came, I hugged them extra tight and said even more "I love you's."

It's so easy to get caught up in the daily grind and allow little things annoy you.....

but I have been reminded in the most saddening way this week what truly is important.

RRCB Step #7 progress

Since I didn't bring home any school work, I really didn't have much of anything to do other than sew and clean today for the snow day. Cleaning needed to be done because the parents are coming up tomorrow for the weekend.

I didn't have anything much in mind when I headed downstairs; I SURELY didn't have RRCB on the mind. BUT... finishing up the color blocks from step #7 just kinda happened today, and the top is finally coming together, nearing completion.

The batteries in the camera died, so I snapped these pics with my phone camera; most definitely not the best quality. Speaking of pics---I didn't think of taking a picture of the Winter Wonderland that we have outside again. 10.5" of new snow when just yesterday just about all the brown grass was clear of it.

Back to quilting. I grabbed these 6.5" blocks and pieced them together as leaders-enders today. I'll be donating this to my Mom's church for their baptismal quilts.

Yikes---terrible picture; the pinks are very light and those purpley squares are actually a very light blue with polkadots.

Alright; I'm off to read before heading off to bed. Still working through Harry Potter, but have slowed a bit. Book #4 is taking me a bit longer to "get into it" ({{But, I suppose it doesn't help that I watched the movie already after having my arm twisted by my family, so the suspense is already gone}})

Happy Wednesday

Raven Stars; Red Blossoms; RRCB; BIL visit; Stash Report

Since Raven Stars isn't a mystery, AND for the fact that I want to show you all that I HAVE been doing something quilty this weekend.........my quilt center has been pieced despite having two more steps yet to be printed for y'all. This is merely the quilt center; I am still planning a simple border.

A shot of my design wall, still housing Red Blossoms; the border pinwheels were my leader-ender project for the day.


At the end of the day, with about 30 minutes left on the clock before I knew I needed to pack up, I pieced together 10 of the string blocks for RRCB.

Amazingly, for much of the day though, I was upstairs watching "Uncle Ryan" and Cassie and all the others play the Wii. Simutaneously, I worked on a puzzle that has been out on our side table since Christmas; I'm not much of a puzzler, but.......I finished it. Sorry Cass!!!!

Although a good amount of sewing happened this weekend, my stash report still won't change (much) since all the fabric used had already been recorded. However, I will at least get updated numbers to include the fabric used last weekend for the mini-nine-patches.

Stash Report: Feb. 14 - 27
Used/week: .61 yds
Purch/week: 0.0 yds

Used/year: 34.93 yds
Purch/year: 6.0 yds

Net Used: 28.93 yds

A snow-in quilting day! Rollin' along again!

Well...late, but certainly plentiful! It's been snowing non-stop since it started last night. I tried getting a picture to show how the wind is literally making it look like the snow is coming down completely sideways, but it didn't turn out. This picture is on the "quiet" side of the house; I'm quite certain if I were to head out and check out the driveway, there will be drifts well over 2 feet tall due to the wind.

Brrrrrr! No going outside for me! However, DH headed out this AM to spend the day ice-fishing. Double brrrrr!


While looking over blogs with my coffee in hand this morning, I really didn't have any specific quilting plans for the day; just another "whatever-I-feel-like-working-on" day. But, as I was in the stairwell on my way to my sewing room---it hit me! ROLL ROLL COTTONBOLL will see action today!!!

I left off with 240 HSTs the last time I worked on RRCB (on Feb. 5). So.......zooooooooooooooooooooooom! A couple of hours later, ALL 600 DONE DONE DONE!

And then some more zooooooooooooooooooooooming! The HSTs pieced into the 5er sets!

And then.....ya guessed it....ZOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOmin some more and step #6 was completely finished!

LOL....okay. So the day hasn't completely zoomed by! I've been at it for 7 hours finishing up step #5 and step #6. I'm startin' in on step #7 but came up to change the load of clothes and check on the girls. They're playing the Wii game and still getting along so far. (They've been at it for only 15 minutes).

Saturday sew-in status...

1. Piece Maltese Stars step #5 - DONE!

2. Piece Blue Ridge Beauty blocks into a top (and open up my design wall!) - SORTA DONE!
I pieced the blocks together into the quilt center, but haven't added borders yet. However, my design wall was finally clear again :0)

3. Write step 2 of Raven Stars - DONE.

4. Piece 1 OR 13 more Red Blossom (Pineapple Blossom) blocks - NOT DONE, but the blocks have taken over my design wall.


DH was off of work early yesterday, so he volunteered to drive the 80 miles down to Eau Claire to pick up my machine that has been sitting, waiting, since Monday. Ah yes, a lovely husband :0) Mind you, he also enjoyed his stop at the Sporting Goods store down in that area... :0) The verdict on my machine: a gear had loosened which is why is was so noisy, and the fact that the gear was loose was causing my needle/bobbin to be out-of-sync. No gear replacement was needed; just a tightening.

And all day long, I've been working some more on the RRCB HST units as my leaders-enders project.

But now...I'm a bit peetered-out. DH was up bright and early at 5:30 to head out with a family friend for a day of ice-fishing. As hard as he really tries at being silent, it still doesn't matter. I'm such a light sleeper. He apologized when I came rolling out of the bedroom at 5:45, but I simply shrugged and said "no biggy." It's the weekend! No stress and I can get my day started before the girls wake up.