Making Pickle Dish Progress!

Life has been pretty crazy the last several days, but I did find time to finish up my four piece melon units on my Pickle Dish. There are twelve in all as you can see from my little stack of folded goodness in the back.

Getting the units sorted out for sewing the rows

The next step was making sure I had the units together in the proper order {and orientation}. Then I sewed the rows together right at the connecting red and black squares. I did that part on my sewing machine. No reason to waste time hand sewing if I don't need to!

Starting to sew the individual rows together

It's pretty cramped in my quilt room for this kind of work, but we still have company in our home. It always seems so obnoxious to run up and down the stairs and/or take up the living room floor during those times. I may be a big talker about my quilting here, but in my home I usually try to keep it more discreet. I really don't want to run the risk of paralyzing someone with boredom. Plus, I have this tendency to drop pins in my wake. My family is fairly accustomed to watching out for pin bombs, but I worry about my poor naive company.*wink

So.. after the single rows were sewn together, then I sewed row 1 and row 2 together at the connecting squares. Not sure if you can tell where the hole in the row is, as the carpet is blue as well! That's where I had to slip in another background square underneath the rows.

Row 1 and Row 2 sewn together & ready for background squares

Which I did. Then I smoothed it out as best I could and started pinning it very well. This is the part that I will applique, just like in the four pc. melon sets. It all seems very hairy scary to me at first, but after it's started, I sort of ease into it and relax. There are two of these empty spaces  to put background squares into for each new set. After I pinned the two background squares for the {row 1, row 2} set then I did the same thing to the {row 3, row 4} set.

Pin, pin, pinning...

Does this seem confusing? 'Cuz it's really not. Just step by step and I will eventually get the quilt completed sewn together! I feel like Thomas the Train--Yes I can, Yes I can, Yes I can! lol  

Here are the two halves of my quilt ready to start the applique work. As soon as I get this part sewn together, then I will connect both larger pieces at the correct red and black squares, slip in two more background squares etc. etc. and then move on to work on the outsides of the rows. Whew! I've been working {off and} on this quilt for over two years now. So exciting to get this far!

Ready, set, go! All ready for the applique!

Also, my gift quilt is all finished up except for a label! I honestly think I like the back more than the front, but that's probably just a symptom of my feeling out of touch with the entire style of quilt. I really am not worried about giving it anymore, just glad that it's done and that I have nothing to be embarrassed about!

The gift quilt

I was too busy to make it over to my mom's yesterday, but she said she got another five or six envelopes/packages! I think we'll wait until she gets the mail today and then I'll try for another picture or two. I'm sure you're just as curious about her happy mail as I am!