I DID IT! One Stitch At A Time.

Yeh!!! I finished climbing my mountain this week, Wed. Oct. 22nd. But instead of one step at a time, it was one stitch at a time. It took 160 hours of work to finish the quilting. A special thank you to those sisters who donated 33 hours of that time (Judy Rowley, Susan Hawkins, Lana Nielson, Michele Casper, Nancy Nielson, & Barb Winder). All I have left to do is finish machine sewing the binding on the outside edge & wrap it over the edge & hand stitch it on the front, which I will do as we are traveling to Utah next week. That will take some time, but much easier & faster than the hand quilting. These two pictures were taken after I finished the last stitches of the Salt Lake Temple (the temple itself & then the whole quilt spread out). The quilt is ivory on the front & sage green on the back.

More Quilting

                This is when all of the daisy flowers, buds, leaves & lines had been completed, before focusing on the temple. The ladies that come say it will be just beautiful! I sure hope so.
This was when I was working mostly on the bottom portion of the temple with all the windows & lots of lines which I have now completed. The spires are hard to see here, but I'll post a picture when I finish this coming week. Then I'll just have the binding to cut out & sew all around the outside edge, & then hand stitch it over the edge. I may do the hand stitching while traveling to Utah the first part of November, since I have some table runners & other projects to work on for the wedding too. We'll see how anxious I get to totally finish the quilt before going to Utah.

This past week I've been going like crazy on the temple quilt & had even more women who showed up from the ward to help. About 63 hours were spent on it this week & so 146 hours have now been put into it & the end is in sight, which is extremely exciting! I'm now working on the towers (spires) of the temple which is tedious work with lots of tiny stitches & starting & stopping. It's addictive & hard for me to quit once I get going. So I stay up until midnight or after almost every night. (It is nice to have Sunday to rest & catch up on my blog, etc.) It's so fun to visit with the sisters that come. We get caught up on what's happening in each other's lives, & of course they are all excited about the wedding & want to see pictures of Janica & Seth.