First Flimsy of 2019!

In January, shortly after I'd injured my shoulder but before I realized how serious the injury was, I'd sewn a bunch of scrap strips into rough blocks. The intention was to create a quilt for the Hands2Help quilt drive this year. 

And then I had to set everything aside to allow my shoulder to heal. 

I've not been completely inactive but I haven't been able to build a quilt top for a good six months. Lately my shoulder has been feeling almost normal again. Hurray! I figured the easiest, safest thing to do would be to get out those string blocks and piece them into columns. 

They all turned out too long in the beginning so there was some reverse sewing involved before I had a flimsy the size and shape I wanted. The most stressful part of this assembly job was tacking those long columns up on the design wall so I could judge for color and print balance. I really have to stretch to reach the top of my design wall, even without a compromised shoulder joint. Eventually I got all the columns to the same approximate length. I wanted a whole cloth border to finish it off visually and to keep all of those seam ends from coming apart when it was mounted on the long arm.

About 60" wide x 80" long

I feel like I lucked out when I found the black print in my stash. It has other colors in it but is dark enough to corral the colors and prints in the strings. Of course, getting those borders on wasn't without a hitch. I cut 2.5" wide strips and began piecing them together end-to-end for length. Then, without thinking, I went to the ironing board and started pressing them in half as if I were making a binding! Rather than undo all that work I went back to the yardage and cut new strips. There was just enough left to get all the way around the top. I doubt there's enough of the false-start binding to use when the time comes but that would be really helpful. I typically cut my binding strips only two and a quarter inches wide though, so I'll have to deal with that issue too. First up is to create a back for this top. A big ole piece of yardage would be the simplest way to go obviously. It would also be the easiest on my shoulder. I know I don't have anything like that on hand however, and there's still old yardage waiting to be used up somehow. That's a problem for another day. Right now I'm just going to bask in the glow of having finally completed another quilt top! 😁