Gathering up the Circles

The past couple weeks have been an adventure of the good, the sad, and sometimes downright scary times, with only a bit of sewing accomplished here and there.  The good times - a six day visit from our tiniest munchkin ...

Bathtime in one of grandma's larger fabric totes!

The sad - visiting a dear friend for the last time, at a hospice facility. And the scary - our son and his family had a tree fall on their house - twice in one week - during successive windstorms. Thankfully in both instances no one was injured as they were not in the rooms affected by the tree strikes which resulted in cracked and falling plaster - the two larger bedrooms of their two-story home. A total of four large trees blew over in their yard during the second storm, one of which also ripped the electrical wires off the house. As is usual with these types of storms many homes were without power, and no generators were to be had in his area, so we were lucky enough to find the only generator still available locally that morning and delivered it to them - some 100 miles away. Thankfully their power is now restored - in time for the nor'easter which hit yesterday, and it is still snowing and blowing in our end of the state. Our daughter who lives about 125 miles east of us has about 36 inches of the not-so-welcome white stuff. We fared better, with only 12-18 inches drifted in the driveway and the back deck so far.

Just before all these goings-on, I spent a morning at the church fellowship hall, arranging my Quilty 365 blocks into rows. This top is being built diagonally, so I started with the first row, which on the finished quilt will end up as bottom left to top right - 25 circle blocks. With the diagonal setting, it took four tables across to get all the squares in place

plus a chair for the last two rows!

After labeling each row I gathered everything up and returned home, and in spare moments began stitching the blocks together, adding setting triangles at the ends of each row. I recall saying in an earlier post that the odds were pretty good that a duplicate fabric would show up in an adjacent block, to be noticed only after sewing together ... and yes!

The only one I've caught, so far, and at this point I figure if these fabrics want to stay together this badly, who am I to argue?

I started with the shortest rows which will end up on the upper left side of the quilt, stitching rows together in groups of three.

At that point I decided it would be easier to add these shortest segments onto the main quilt body last, so I moved on to sewing together the longest diagonal rows, and here are the longest segments stretched out on the living room floor.

Point to point diagonally this monster measures a whopping 132 inches! Yowzers, these are long seams! When all the sections are sewn together the top should measure somewhere around 92 inches square. Before borders. In the meantime, strips and segments litter most every surface in my sewing area.

At this point all the segments are made for the left side of the quilt and I think there are nine or so rows of circles yet to be stitched together. Hopefully in the next week or so, barring any more major interruptions to the scattered and scarce sewing time around here.

I realize all this may make little or no sense to anyone else, but I'm so excited to finally see this quilt beginning to take shape, just as I envisioned it several months ago! And I'm so thankful that there was enough of that burnt orange sashing fabric to make the quilt the size I had hoped for. Luck of the Irish? This week, that may just be the case!