I See the Finish Line

I knew that once the piecing was done, the quilting and assembly of the Bernina University jacket wouldn’t take long. Thankfully, I remembered—just in time—that I needed to reverse the piecing of the sleeves to make them mirror images of each other. It wouldn’t have been a catastrophe if I hadn’t, but better not to have to punt.

The silk batting was a good choice. I like the weight and drape it gives to the jacket. The quilting is allover loops, because I am at the “get it done” stage of this project and because I like loops. This is the back:

The fronts also have been quilted and cut out. I still need to quilt the sleeve pieces but ran out of time yesterday afternoon. Once those are done, I will serge the edges of each piece before assembling the jacket. I don’t intend for this to be a reversible jacket, so I am not going to take the time to bind the inside seams.

I am dithering about what color binding to use on the front edges. My choices are black, the charcoal that I used for the lining fabric, or the teal. I am leaning toward the teal. I’d like to finish this by early next week.

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I rearranged my travel plans for BU. I’ll fly down to Salt Lake City with the group from the store, but I fly to Seattle after BU instead of coming home. We’re on Delta from Kalispell. I could have stayed on Delta and just changed the flight from SLC to Seattle instead of Kalispell, but I didn’t like the timing of the flights. Either I would have to miss my last BU class to get the airport on time or I’d be flying into Seattle at 11:00 pm (ugh). Alaska Airlines had a flight at a better time and I had enough airline miles to pay for that ticket. I had had the foresight to get a refundable ticket on Delta, so I was able to cancel the original reservation and re-book as a one-way flight. I am all set. Robert and Deana are working on lodging.

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I was in the garden again at 6:30 am yesterday. This will be my routine for the rest of the summer unless it’s raining. I moved a piece of black plastic from one side of the garden to the other and surprised a nope rope:

I suggested it visit its cousin on the other side of the garden, the big snake that lives under the sage bush.

The strawberries are producing like crazy. I picked almost two gallons yesterday and that was only half the bed. I cleaned them and put them in the freezer on trays. It’s raining this morning so I may not get the rest of them until this afternoon.