Listening to The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving written by Jonathan Evison, read by award-winning narrator Jeff Woodman. A thirty something guy is at his rope’s end, running out of money, no career path or employment history, to speak of, decides to give caregiving a try. His first job is with a 19-year-old, wheelchair bound, girl crazy, angry teenager with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Personal forgiveness and finding purpose in life seems to be the theme. I’m enjoying it. Perfect to listen to while working on a quilt, nothing too heavy, nothing I will be quizzed on later, but with feelings that will stick with me, I am sure.

Love the narrator, he sounds like a guy next door. I had to double-check to see if the author was reading it because it feels so genuine. I like that about a reader. He also read, with an accent, Life of Pi.

So, while listening, I’m still working on getting this quilt to the point of sitting in front of the TV and quilting it. For a hand-quilter, that’s always the goal, isn’t it?

This is my first experience with wool batting. I was advised Hobbs Heritage was the best, all I could find locally was Hobbs Heirloom. No one could tell me exactly what the difference was except the other one was folded.

Wool batting is very thin. Thinner than even any of the really nice cotton battings. This one does have some slightly thicker and thinner spots but nothing like the cabinet full of cotton batting I used to use. I also hear wool is very warm for its weight and washes beautifully. I’m really excited to see for myself.

My friends over at Celebrate Hand Quilting highly recommend wool and I can now see why. They also gave me a little tip to get it nice and smooth before basting. Use a hair dryer. You can actually just watch the wrinkle melt. Well, not melt, that doesn’t sound good, but they do just disappear in seconds. And those big humpy lumps left from being on the outside of the roll? They just blow off the edge of the batting! What a brilliant cure. Reason enough to use wool on every quilt!! This needs just a little more time under the heat and it will be ready to baste.

I’m using a Bohin mechanical chalk marking pencil and marking for 1/4″ outline stitching. This pencil works really well. Nice thin lines. This is one of the few quilts I’ve marked before basting. Normally I wait until after because I’m not sure how I’ll quilt it, then I have to mark over pins and puffy batting. It doesn’t make for as accurate marking, doing it after it is basted, but enough to show me where I am going.

And while I almost always quilt 1/4″ outside the seams, and should be able to do it without marking it, this one is going to have some confusing contours to it. I decided to go ahead and spend the hour and a half marking it, instead of removing screwed up quilting, later. I’m getting smarter with every quilt.

Pin-basted and ready to start the quilting. Well, not exactly. I should probably finish my  current project, I’ve only got about 10 hours left to go on it.

That’s what I’ve been working on. How about you???

Linking up with:

Quilty WIPs
Fabric Tuesday
Design Wall Monday