Thursday, April 21, 2011

plain spoken III - top complete!

I can't believe it! Yesterday I finally finished the quilt top for Plain Spoken III. You know, the on that was a pile of fabric sitting on my desk in November and is going to become a wedding quilt for our friends who were married in October? Haha, clearly it was never going to be done on time.

Plain Spoken III - Top Complete

As of this week, I was still super stumped on how I was possibly going to quilt this beast. It currently sits about about 119" by 117" which is probably unreasonably large. But on Tuesday my dear, sweet, intelligent husband suggested a brilliant idea! I'm not going to share it just yet. I want to make sure it works first. Fingers crossed for me!

When the top was finished it was too big to hold up outside and no one was around to hold it for me anyways, so I decided to set it up on our bed and snap a couple of shots. You can see just how big it is. It hangs quite close to the ground on either side and it is so long that it is pulled all the way to the headboard and tucked around the mattress AND box spring with about 6 inches underneath at the foot board. It's true that I have it on a queen sized bed, but still. I am hoping that quilting and washing will reduce it's size by about 4-5 inches each in width and length.

Plain Spoken III - Top Complete

I've decided to quilt it the exact same way as Plain Spoken II. I'll quilt straight(ish) lines about 1/4 inch apart, across the width of the quilt. And I've decided to be really daring and quilt it in medium gray! I keep trying to remind myself what Clinton & Stacy always say "neutrals go with neutrals" and stop freaking out about quilting a brown and beige quilt with gray. Again, this was dear, sweet hubby's idea. And when I checked with my ultra stylish brother, he agreed that no shade of blue or brown would be quite right and would make it seem too matchy. I like the idea of it feeling a bit more eclectic, so I'm just going to go for it!

The goal for today is to iron all the layers, baste it and start the quilting. Of course to do that, I have to move my dining room table into the living room, wash the floors and wrestled 120 square inches of batting, backing and quilt top over my ironing board. Hmm...maybe I'll just iron on the kitchen floor...

Wish me luck!

1 comment:

Erika :: Ollie & Olina said...

If you get that whole thing under your machine, I'd like to know how!