The quilting frenzy of the past five days has finally blown itself out. Tomorrow I will do ordinary things like laundry and cooking and my job. But it sure has been good while it lasted.

Today I finished the Disappearing 4-Patch. It took about an hour to sew the chunks together, and another hour to add the borders, and it was done. I'll just say that some quilts are art, and I certainly consider some of the things that I have made to be art. Other quilts are just meant to do their job of providing warmth and comfort; this is definitely one of those quilts. But I like the technique, and I expect I will use it again in the near future; given the right mix of fabrics it could even be quite elegant.

I was quite proud of the fact that I managed to get the borders on with the orientation that I meant them to have. I wanted the text to read right side up toward the edge of the quilt, and that's what happened. I know it doesn't show that way in the picture, but it really worked for real.

Once that was done I pulled out the fabrics for the tessellated flowers and started cutting. Once I started sewing I realized I wasn't absolutely sure about my choice of size for the small triangle pieces. I had originally cut them 1-1/2 inches, half the size of the 3-inch block. But then they seemed a bit skimpy, and I wasn't sure. So it was time to make another set using 2-inch triangles. Here are the results of the two experiments: I'm still not sure. I've decided to set that aside and just look at them for a while, then chose. I've also decided that this is going to be like the tilted stars and be a "leader and ender" project - one where the blocks get sewn in and around other projects. Once in a while a simple project is good to have around, but after a while it can become mind-numbingly dull if that's all I work on. So I'll have pieces cut and ready on the work table. When I run out of fabric I'll sew it together and see what I've got.

Once I set that project aside, then there was the question of what to do next. I remembered the Super 9-Patch baby quilts (http://www.quiltmaker.com/patterns_downloads/quiltmaker/patt230.pdf) that I've made in the past and remembered that I had bought a set of fabrics to make some for Taigen, only I made her another quilt instead and these got set aside. It was easy enough to pull out the fabrics and cut. If I had paid attention to where the fold was on the first set, the sewing would be easy as well. As it is, I've pulled some other pieces out of the scrap drawers to make some substitutions, and we'll see what we eventually end up with. The one I was able to complete from pieces that ended up (mostly) cut to the right size is this one:

So at the end of 5 days I have 3 tops completed, 2 more that will just be a matter of figuring out what will fit together, cutting a few new pieces and sewing the 9-patches together, and the beginning of a lovely napping quilt for myself. The Tilted Stars and the Disappearing 4-Patch will go to the long-armer on Thursday for basting; the baby quilts will just get a flannel backing and I can handle those myself. I consider it a successful frenzy.