Midkid5 said:

Having watched and listened with enjoyment the tales of this quilt I'm saddened that it's so close to done.

**Clearly** a sequel must be made!

That is going to be a lovely quilt with a gorgeous backing.  I can hardly wait to see the finished product!

Cris in MT

I will not make a sequel to my quilt!!  One per lifetime says Judy in Ohio .....

Instead I will throw down a challenge. Who's next?  Batter up to the home plate and take a swing ....

Who else has lived a life that can be laid out in quilt blocks? Go through Marcia's list of blocks at Quilter's Cache or the longer list in the index at Barbara Brackman's Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Designs and those block names will really stimulate your imagination big time.

My only "rule" as such was absolutely no photos. No photo of my one and only wedding or me wearing my Mariner Girl Scout uniform, etc. Otherwise it was "My Quilt, My Rules" which gave me some hilarious moments (and discards).

Of all the adjectives in the famous thesaurus, Cris, I would not pick "lovely" to describe the quilt.

My loving daughter calls the quilt top a "doozy" as she smiles at it, but then she has always thought I had a great sense of humor. Her favorite block is the one that honors her great-grandfather Charlie Miller, the man who taught me to spit watermelon seeds and to work crossword puzzles.

"... who taught me to spit watermelon seeds and to work crossword puzzles"

Video or it never happened!!!!

Wow!!! I love that backing.

I love that backing fabric!  Definitely bold.  And no-- we don't tire of hearing about your KK quilt.  

It's available at Keepsake Quilting; I may be getting older and more feeble but I am still a darned good enabler. 

I started working on a t-shirt graduation quilt last night and was so pleasantly surprised.  The mom had gone through and washed and labeled the shirts:  front & back, front only, back only.  And she sent exactly how many shirts I told her.  She is a school superintendent, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that she is organized and follows directions. 

A school superintendent would be the kind a person who listens carefully and so that's why you got what you asked for.

One thing that really got to me this morning was how long it took me to load the quilt parts and get started on experimenting on what I should do with quilting on the Kresge Kid project. All of you younger longarm quilters, listen up .... age will creep up on you someday and it ain't gonna be pretty.   When I bought Lily Aurora twelve years ago I could load those Project Linus quilts in a jiffy and get them quilted in a flash. Now I have found that the machine is willing but the operator is always sitting down to rest ... the old grey mare, she ain't what she used to be.

Anyhow, notice how I created a wide top border for "play space" so I could experiment on what type of little motif I will use to "tie" the quilt parts together.  I'm using Warm & Plush batting (found some remnants and fused them together yesterday) and so once the quilt is off the frame I'm expecting the small motifs to sort of "disappear" into the plushness of the quilt.

https://warmcompany.com/product/warm-plush-queen-bolt/

Did not really need to experiment very much; I tried stars and pseudo-zig-zagging but then it was easy to decide to use the same motif I used on the necktie quilt that I made for my DF back in the mid-1990s, a motif I used on my Singer 201-2.  I put the stitch length to 15 inches and did some swirly circle work, slackened the thread, moved the needle over a handspan's length, dropped the needle and started swirling again.  Of course I will have a lot of thread clipping to do once I take the quilt off the frame. 

I will be extremely flexible about where I will drop the needle because the whole point of doing this type of "tacking" is to avoid certain parts of some of the blocks.  I see no need to bury the ends of any threads because this quilt will never be laundered.  I have a medium purple thread in the bobbin and my favorite variegated turquoise in the needle.