Sunday Quilting Fest

I'm determined to get Katherine's graduation quilt finished today.  I took a break when the bobbin ran out, thinking that I was about halfway done, but now that I look back at the flimsy photo, I think it is more like two thirds.  I'm right in the middle of the Finding Jesus shirt near the bottom left.  Yay!  I really like the butterfly and monkey block on the bottom row.  It is half pillowcase and half PJ pants.  I'm sure they must both hold fond memories. 

I really like the flannel that I found for the back.  I got not quite enough on purpose so that I could work in a little bit of the border fabric.  I even have enough of the border and sashing fabrics to make a coordinating pillowcase.  Such a nice finishing touch, don't you think?

Choosing a quilting thread is always a trick on t-shirt quilts because there is so much contrast in the shirts.  I tried many shades of blue and teal before reverting back to my default of grey.  Not too dark on the white shirts or too light on the dark shirts. I used teal for the back though, and it is virtually invisible.  I'm doing some loops in the background, but sticking to a less dense meander in the shirts to avoid detracting from the design.  Also it makes it easier to avoid the heavily painted areas of some of the shirts.  It goes quickly, which is a bonus.  

When I went to pull the quilt photos from the memory card, there were more fire pictures.  This is our backyard fence -- the same one that blew down in the hurricane.  

This was the view from upstairs.  Its our neighbors pool screen on the right.  We were all really lucky the wind wasn't blowing the other way.  There is still a thin line of unburned buffer foliage separating us from the burn zone.  I'm thinking that thinning out vegetation might come up on the list after the quilt is done.  

I graded 560 essays last week between the last AP test and the final practice AP test!  I was so tempted to save them for the weekend, but I knew that the kids would want to see Infinity Wars and so I powered through until 11:30 on Thursday night.  I'm so glad that I did now that it is done.  Best of all, they were the last essays of the year!  Well, at least until I go to AP reading in June when there will be thousands of essays to grade.  

Having procrastinated enough, I'll go wind one more bobbin and finish this quilt off.  If I can get the binding on this afternoon then I can have a bit of a movie marathon while sewing binding.   Sounds like a lovely way to spend a Sunday evening.  My little guys have their Biology EOC tomorrow, so  We'll have to take a breather before shifting into less stressful learning activities.   They won't want to do anything at all ever again, so we will have to work together to find a nice compromise.