198 blocks. 3 sewers. 2 quilts. 1 weekend.

I drove up to Michigan this weekend to spend time with my family. Friday was my Dad's birthday and I got there in time to have dinner with everyone and eat Dad's birthday cake. We are lucky to have such an awesome Dad that loves us all so well. At dinner we went around and each said something we love about him and it wasn't hard to think of something. 

I got to spend the whole weekend at my parents' house with our family popping in and out. My mom is the best mom and quilter around. She happily volunteered to help my friend Sarah and I make our matching friendship quilts this weekend-- a huge task. We started Friday night after dinner and worked pretty much every waking moment. 

Sar got in from Chicago just as mom and I finished cutting out and marking all of my fabric. We're both doing navy backgrounds but have different fabric for the chevron shapes. My mom's quilting room is a fabric wonderland and she let us pick out our favorite patterns for our quilts.

There are three big sections of a quilt--cutting out all the fabric, making the 99 blocks for each quilt, then sewing all the blocks together into rows and the final quilt with borders. It's a process. Because we were both making a quilt we doubled the work.

Luckily we're a quilting team so all three of us worked together to sew, iron and piece. With Sar, mom and I all working we could work fluidly without stopping in between each piece. We made a list on Saturday and think we've made 9 quilts as team quilters together.

Katie and Nick's small group came over for a chili cook off on Saturday. Suddenly the house was filled with people sampling chili, playing with kids and carving pumpkins in the backyard. Sar, mom and I continued to quilt in the sewing room. Lincoln was our best visitor. He climbed right up on mom's lap and eagerly tried to help with the fabric and pins.

We quilted till 11:30 Saturday night, started again by 9 on Sunday and finished the last seem at about 1:45. Boom. Two giant, matching, beautiful quilts. We love them.

We had to go out to the back porch to get the whole thing in a picture.

Then we tried the front yard so that you could actually see both of us in the picture. I dropped off the quilts at Marilyn's on the way back through Indiana. She'll do the actual quilting of them and we'll get them back at December Quilt Camp to do the binding. We're so excited about the finished projects!