Happy Valentine's Day

This is a quilt that I made and donated to my quilt guild to raffle at our meeting Tuesday night.   I particularly like the middle left heart.

I fussy-cut it.

Do any of you have special plans for the day?  I don't think we do.  We will probably exchange cards and that is about it.  We are sort of beyond the romatic gesture-phase in our relationship where the day requires over-priced or drooping-head roses.  I would rather have a cheerful bouquet on a different day.  We will also avoid going out to dinner as the crowds are not worth it.  Friday is a day off for my husband (Monday too) so I expect we will do something fun then--maybe lunch out or something. 

I spent yesterday unsewing nearly all that I had done on Tuesday.  Ugh!  Thanks to all of your encouragement, I got all 100 stars pieced together for my king-sized quilt and I had begun to do the borders.  There is a cream one, then a navy, then a gold, and then a red.  After the red comes a large pieced sawtooth border of hsts.  Since I have enlarged the pattern, I didn't have the necessary measurments.  I "figured" them out on paper and set about sewing them on.  All 4 of the cream.  All 4 of the navy.  All four of the gold.  This morning I started out to work on the red.  But something wasn't quite right.  The interior of the quilt (the stars) finished at 80" so it was 80.5"  The cream, navy, gold, and red borders finish at 5" so that when on, the quilt will now measure 90.5"  (to finish at 90")  I have to have a number divisible by 6 so that the pieced sawtooth borders fit.  The problem was that my borders were mostly on and the quilt was going to end up being 92!"  What had happened?  I went over it all a few times.  Finally, I realized that I had forgotten to take off the quarter inch seam allowances of the center of the quilt each time I did the figuring to determine the lenth of the next borders.  This made the quilt grow by a half inch with each round.  I was surprised that I hadn't noticed an extra half inch when I was applying them.  I even cut and pin, but I guess losing a half inch in a length over 80 inches is pretty easy.  Nothing was left to do but to rip them all off.  Luckily I hadn't messed up the first one, so the cream could stay on. 

It took about two hour-long tv shows to get them all off.  My stitch was tiny!  This is a good place to mention that I got new glasses early last week and I'm still not used to them.  My new prescription is drastically different than my old, so they said it would take awhile.  Well, it wasn't fun trying to see those tiny stitches, but I perservered.  Once I got them off, I pressed them, recut them, and sewed them back on.  Luckily the borders were too long and not too short!!!!!!

So today I shall go back up and begin (again) with the red border and then start making tons of HSTs for the sawtooth borders.

I hope you all have a wonderful day!
JoAnne