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I ended up only 2 days late on the deadline. Delivered the finished project on Wednesday, May 17. The quilt will spend the summer at Lancaster Newspaper's office and then will be auctioned off in September. They have a lovely opening nite on Friday, June 2 if you happen to be in the hood!

So my DH says, "So what are you going to do now?" A tough question. Because this quilt took so long to make I haven't given it too much thought. All I've thought about for the past several months is making the deadline on it. I have much work to do toward getting AQS certification for appraisals. I really need to get some quilt ideas out of my head and onto paper or, better yet, cloth. I need to help my kids study for finals. I need to get my eyes checked. I need to embroider Turning Point logos onto some summer shirts for the staff so they don't sweat to death. Among other things. But DH is great, helping me clean up the sewing room, moving some of the stuff, and letting Roomba the robotic vacuum cleaner do its thing. I picked up the sewing machine yesterday and will now try to clean up the rest of my room and re-group. You will notice I have not said a lick about housework!;)

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I delivered the Rockin quilt on Wednesday. This is what has happened to my sewing space during its construction though. There is crap everywhere. I did manage to unpack the dirty clothes from Paducah (3 weeks ago), but my papers, treasures and other junk still remain in the suitcase on the floor. Very sad.

I dropped the sewing machine off at the dealer's this morning for a cleaning/overhaul. Haven't had it done since I bought it 1 1/2 years ago. Again, very sad. Even the poor cat is trying to stay out of the way by sleeping on a plastic storage box containing stuff from the table runner finale class last weekend. Shameful.

I have some domestic chores that definitely need doin'.

So now, with new found zeal, I will begin the clean-up and reorganization of my space. I just can't start anything new in it's current condition.

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Each one of these bad boys takes 3 hours to quilt. Quilted all morning, took my lunch break and now I'm mentally prepared to finish this quilt. I forgot how long it takes to make a queen size quilt. However, during the "zen" of stippling, I am able to work out some design ideas I've had for awhile. So I guess that time is useful. The quilt "was" due on Monday...It just ain't happening. Right now, my goal is to get it completed by Tuesday morning so that I can get it to the studio to have the photography done. I still have 400 inches of binding to make and sew on. If I can get all of this done, I'll be able to deliver it to the museum on Wednesday.

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Here's the center
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You can see the rocking chair quilted in with some freeform feathers.
Stipple, stipple, stipple.
According to my figuring, I'm about 4-5 days behind schedule. Each one of the matchstick borders that I'm working on now take about 2 hours to quilt. My husband and children have been very supportive as I've been holed away in the studio every spare minute. Will update again later this week. Not much more to say except I'm tired!