Joyful!

 

I added this sparkly fun fabric as a border to the colorful cobblestones quilt, which I have named "Joyful."

The fabric has glittery silver stars, which makes it a bit too cutesy for me, but I didn't read the description carefully enough, but it's perfectly fine.

This is the fabric I'll use for the backing for the JOYFUL quilt.

In non-quilty news, I cleaned out the shed. It had been sadly neglected over the years. I went in there wearing a mask, googles and gloves, and cleaned, tossed, organized, and swept the place clean. There were some openings and it was clear it had been a winter home for mice. I filled in the holes and literally swept every inch. There were tools in there I had never seen. Yes, there are two weed whackers and two hedge trimmers. There were four leaf rakes, three digging shovels and four garden hoses. I have sorted the good stuff and the stuff that has to go away (four bottles of weed killer, three containers of plant food, etc.)

I feel pretty damn good about it.

Colorful Cobblestones

 

I finally found a layout I liked for the colorful cobblestones. 

Once I worked that out, I decided to web the quilt top together. I have mixed feelings about this method. It's one of those things that work better IN THEORY than IN PRACTICE, at least for me.

I figured out why it bugs me so much. 

Normally when I sew a quilt together, I do it the old fashioned way. I take two pieces off the design wall, sew them together, press the seam, and then move to the next pair. Then I'll sew pairs together, and then quartets until I get a row complete. When I have two rows complete I'll sew them together. When the entire quilt is in paired rows, I'll sew two together, and continue along in this way until the top is complete. 

This profoundly old-fashioned method allows me to get the blocks lined up perfectly, and keeps the threads on the back from fraying all over hell.

In other words, I handle the blocks as little as possible.

When you web a quilt together, all the blocks are moving around, rubbing against each other, and what I find annoying is that when you sew the rows together, you very often get threads stuck in the seams, and when you (read: I) iron the seam, you (meaning I) have to pull those out. I find this tremendously annoying and slow going. 

Although, to be honest, I think if you are using 2-1/2" squares, these threads are much less of an issue.

YMMV. (Your mileage may vary.)

So... how do I like being retired?

Silly question.

I am quite enjoying it!