Done!

Two years ago, I fell in love with the pattern for this quilt. I agonized over paying $84 for the pattern alone, but finally succumbed when the store had only one remaining and I feared missing out. Then I suffered over buying seventeen yards of fabric all at one time for the front, back, and the binding. At $7-$10 per yard, it was a serious investment. When I won a $100 gift certificate from a quilt shop in Joplin, I bought the black fabric. I was committed.
Over the next year and a half, I assembled the blocks, using a technique called raw-edge fusible machine applique (or something like that -- don't quote me). Then I struggled with how to quilt it. Fearing I would screw it up, I decided to ask a local long-arm quilter (Dorie Hruska) to do it for me. For the first time, I relinquished "artistic control" and paid someone to quilt for me. I'm not sorry. The quilt and the quilting are gorgeous. All the local quilt gurus tell me I have to enter it in the next local quilt show. We'll see. Even though I spend a lot of time bragging about my quilts on this blog, when it comes right down to it, I'm kind of shy.

Yesterday was root canal #2. It went fine, we'll see how the recovery goes later in the week. I'm keeping plenty of Vicodin handy, just in case I need it, because we may be snowed in later this week -- possibly one or two days of school closure. More time to quilt!