some quilting things

 Friday, I ran down to Denison to get the first (of the two) quilts I took in. 

The second one wasn't done; the woman was somewhat apologetic but she told me a woman brought in **16** (!) quilts that she HAD to have done by August 1. (This is an automatic longarm, if you're doing pantograph patterns, so you don't have to be right there running it, but it can take a day to several days to do a quilt, depending on how large and how complex the pattern is, and of course custom quilting takes a lot longer - this one is just a pantograph pattern of dragonflies, which you can kind of see in the photo).

I told her the second quilt was for me, so there was no deadline on it. (I got the sense without her saying that the person with the many quilts was somewhat demanding, and anyway, who DOES that, bringing in that many and expecting the person to interrupt their queue because you have a deadline?). I'll get it eventually, she said probably before the end of the summer.

And anyway, I have this one to put a binding on and also the "Homebound" quilt I got quilted earlier this spring.

Yesterday was a workday at church - cleaning up for an eventual videoing event. I cleaned what was probably 20 years of accumulated bugs out of the glass globes over the external lights (I figured I could be careful; the person in charge noted they were old and probably one of a kind - I filled a basin of water and carried it out to where they were instead of carrying them in (where there were tiled floors and metal sinks where they could slip out of my hands). I also polished some  of the brass items (the cross and candlesticks that sit on the communion table - the things that actually hold the bread and the cups are currently not in use as we are using the individually-wrapped sets, which I think someone referred to as Eucharistables a là Lunchables). I also polished the brass door-plates (like the handles, but the other side - a flat plate) and another member who is just a little older than I am but has been a member a LONG time like me, said "Oh, do you remember Dorothy? this makes me think of Dorothy" and yes, my friend Dorothy Silver, she always disliked it when the brass doorplates were tarnished and she felt like someone should be cleaning them weekly (I think some times she did it herself). 

Today after church, I decided to start sewing the blocks for the "chandelier" quilt together, and decided to try doing it without laying the whole thing out - which is a real rate-limiting step, it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort and then you have to carefully stack everything up so you sew things in the right order.

So instead, I counted up the  blocks dominated by each different color

And then I used the sketch of the layout in the book and noted (with pencil) where I might put each color, so I could arrange them without having a big chunk of the same color close together. An added challenge is that there aren't that many different prints, but I'm trying as I work to spread out the designs.

 It's my own copy of the book and I wrote in pencil, but you can see my codes there (P is pink, for example). If my copier/printer were working, I'd have photocopied the page, but it isn't, one of the things I have to attend to this summer is getting a new one or maybe just getting a new laptop AND printer, seeing as this laptop is fairly old by laptop standards.

I got it about a third sewn together. I have another strip to attach (they are set diagonally; this will eventually be a square) but I ran out of steam for it. (I had misplaced a couple of the blocks and had to find them before I could start working).

I impulse bought four yards of a pink fabric with flappers on it at JoAnn's yesterday, and it's possible it would be big enough for a backing, so if the colors go okay (sometimes pinks don't really match), I might use that. If not, I think I have a big piece of calico with pinks in it that will work.