Escape Through Stained Glass

Every quilt has a story . . .  THIS ONE has a doozy. :)
Quilt in a Day Month!
I started this stained glass version of a Stack & Slash quilt July 2nd.
My plan was to use Sharon Pederson's quilt-as-you-go method of construction.
It's my first attempt at anything bigger than a table runner quilting this way.
I enjoyed it and will look for other QAYG design ideas!

I made one of these quilts from a Clueless Quilter's Workshop years ago. That one I hand-quilted and gave to my sister-in-law. (She hugged it over and over, earning future quilt-gifting privileges!) This one was supposed to use up stash from my totes and only buy fabric as needed. So how did I manage to buy 11 yards by the time it was done? Let's just say it takes a lot of black to make the stained glass sashes! And 2 yards don't really count as I  grabbed fabric that looked perfectly black at the store, but when I got it home it looked like charcoal.

I lucked out with my first stack of 9 fabrics: slashed and re-stacked with no two fabrics in blocks together. As designed. Unfortunately my 2nd stack got shuffled wrong and EVERY block had two of the same fabrics in them.
I fixed them. Of course.
And then went to the internet to find the correct formula for stacking & slashing.

My Stitch-in-the-Ditch presser foot (or Edge foot) was getting it's first real workout and I needed to learn to look ahead at the foot guide and not where the needle goes in so the stitching would land near the "ditch". My recent discovery that my old Viking 960 indeed had needle position features - either unused or forgotten - came in amazingly useful. It's like a brand new toy!!

I decided to give up my ritual of watching local morning news loop (repeating the same news for 2 hours) and headed into the sewing room soon after Tom left for work. Things were going along quite nicely and by July 9th a stack of blocks were all quilted and I was beginning to sew rows together. About 8 a.m. I looked up from my sewing machine and out through the open window. TWO MEN, with GUNS and a SEARCH DOG were walking past the window - less than 3 feet away! DOC was written on the backs of their bullet proof vests!  Department of Corrections. Searching for escaped convicts and one of their grandmothers lives across the road!


Perhaps a better response would have been to for me to dive for cover UNDER the sewing machine?
Instead I said, "Um, EXCUSE ME?"
Not sure which of us were more surprised!  One asked me if I had seen two men walk by?
(No...just you two...with guns.)

Quilt progress came to a grinding halt.

Finished!
August 1, 2012.

Jax tested it out first.