A tiny bit of progress and a major headcold :(

I have been totally knocked off my feet for the past 3 days by this awful head cold! This was definitely not a good weekend for it - I had plans for sewing, gym time, homework, cleaning, and and and and... and none of that got done to the extent that I had hoped.

After being completely useless after work Friday and all day yesterday, I was able to battle the headache and general head fogginess.sneezing/sniffling/million times nose blowing and get some sewing done - here is the finished quilting on my For the Love of Solids Swap mini-quilt:

People are still telling me that the grey looks salmon - and I think they are just insane - but please be assured it is GREY with 3 shades of blue, not white and salmon and 2 shades of blue. (Seriously - is my monitor the only one that sees this correctly?!?!)

Anyway, I am super relieved to have the quilting done because I've been stressing over this for weeks without any direction. Hope my partner likes it - she hasn't commented much in the swap at all so I am worried she will hate it, especially since I like it so much! Blue wasn't listed as her favorite color on the swap form, but I used 2 of the other colors she listed and inspiration from her favorites - so hopefully I was not too far off.

On Tuesday my friend from work and I are having a "mini quilt guild" meeting - our very first! My project will be sewing the binding the mini quilt. I need to get the binding strips made and machine sewn on the front so I can hand sew it on Tuesday - as that will probably take me the whole 2 hours of our meeting so I want to be prepared.

Our little meeting stems from the lack of a modern quilt guild around us. The closest one is 90 minutes away up north of Philadelphia and that runs just too late for me when I go to work at 6am every morning. We tried the local quilt guild meeting at the senior center last month and were treated as "funny young pups who are trying to see what this quilting thing is all about" - and definitely did not feel like we could ever fit in or were interested in ever going back. So, we decided to have a monthly meeting of our own to work on our quilting projects and just have fun hanging out together. We will have good company and good food so I can't complain - even tho it would have been nice if we could have found some more people with the same interests at the other guild.

I still need to make a "small item" for this swap and a little extra something for my Pillow Talk Swap and get those both sent off around the 12th of March. I still have a week left, and thank goodness one Sunday left to work on my items since we know that is generally the only day I ever have sewing time. I was thinking of a zipper pouch for both - they are so good for holding crafting supplies and little projects! We'll see what I can come up with when I have some more spare time.

Sick of being sick and wish I had the energy to craft some more today since it is only 4pm. I need to get my quilt top, backing, and batting "squared up" today tho because I am taking it down to the long arm quilter on Saturday - so excited! Nervous that my backing and batting are not big enough tho... should go check on that... if only I could stop sneezing, sniffling, and blowing my nose long enough to do anything! UGH...

***Insert FREAK OUT here. After squaring everything up, my batting and backing is too small - only 3 inches bigger than the quilt top, ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. After a lot of that (ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh freaking out!!!)... I found another solid backing I was going to use for a different quilt and it looks like I have enough so I'll just make a new backing, cut new batting, and stop freaking out :)
Hope everyone else's weekends were less germ filled than mine and a lot more productive!