A finish is in sight!

This is a picture of my front yard and driveway.  As you can see, there is a lot of snow.  A LOT of snow!  Record breaking amount of snow, I'm told.  And more to come.  We have about 3 to 4 feet of snow on the ground now and another 8 to 10 inches is expected this weekend.  Yikes!  I may have to get out the snowshoes in order to make a trip to the store!

So what should a quilter do in such snowy weather?  Stay inside and work on quilts, of course!  I've been working on the Mabel quilt every day and amazingly, have been able to do it on the "fancy, dancy" sewing machine!  It's a miracle, I tell ya, a blessed miracle!

This is the "plain" block, done up in neutral batik fabrics. I chose a somewhat elaborate quilting design for this block.

In the colored blocks, which have more piecing, I chose a simpler design and yesterday I finished up the last of these blocks, so the entire center was quilted up. As you can see from the pic, I have marking lines that I'll have to get out.  I used both a water soluble blue pen and a Frixion pen so a bit of time in the washer when I've finished the binding is called for. I know I can erase the Frixion lines with heat, but sometimes there's a shadow line lift over that I don't like, so into the washing machine.  Along with a color catcher in case one of these batik colors run. (And yes, I see that I've cut off one of the points of this star but I'm not bothered with that at this point.  Only another quilter would be bothered and altho I've done my best in constructing this quilt, there is more than this one mistake in there.  LOL) 

After I'd finished that last block, it was on to the first border--a simple spiral every 2 inches or so, completely free hand.  I marked the sections of this border with a sliver of bar soap, so another thing that will need to come out in the wash. 

And yesterday I began working on the final border. I'm using a partial stencil for this design and am liking it pretty much.  I have nearly half of this border finished and after I make a trip to the grocery store today, I'll be back in the sewing room, trying to get this finished up before dinner.  

I already have the binding strips cut so it should be easy to get them sewn on and then one or two evenings with PBS and the quilt will be finished.

So that's the progress I've made with this quilt. I hope to add it to the "Finished" list soon, and then I can resume quilting up the one I began for my son.  I also have another throw quilt that I'd like to quilt up so I can give it to a friend who helped my son so much when he first moved to Madison.  My future contains lots of quilting and very little piecing!