Finchlover, the only reason for not quilting in the ditch is that you won't be able to see your quilting stitches. If you're quilting with a machine it doesn't matter because they will all be the same size anyway. If you quilt by hand and have beautiful, neat, even, tiny quilting stitches, you wouldn't do them justice by hiding them in the ditch. You'd want to show them off by stitching a fancy pattern on the face of the quilt. I've been quilting for about 36 years, not sure how many I've made during that time, maybe 35 or 40. Some larger some smaller, some machine pieced and hand quilted, some all handmade. Made a few embroidered tops and hand quilted. I've only made one quilt that was machine quilted and I did quilt in the ditch. I made it about 20 years ago and I'm still using it. Made a few whole cloth quilts, small ones for babies, pink, yellow, blue, lavender, that had tons of quilting on them. I use a lap hoop to do the quilting and generally hand piece the tops. Haven't done an applique top in a long time, but I've been thinking about a cute butterfly pattern I saw recently on e-Bay I'd like to try. I confess I have several tops that need to be quilted, but since I use a lap hoop, I really do need cold weather to do them. My current project is a yo-yo quilt, which isn't really a quilt at all, but it takes a real long time to make and uses a lot of different fabrics and requires a lot of hand sewing. I just finished cutting out 4000 2" squares for a postage stamp quilt and I have a sack of 2" x 45" strips to piece together and cut out a four pointed star quilt top. Lastly, I'm still in the gathering stage of a silk quilt using men's silk neck ties. I have collected about 50 ties, taken out the stitching and facings and have the fabric neatly waiting until I have enough to start piecing. I figure for a nice sized quilt that's suitable for display I'll need about 250 ties. Using all the silk, I'll stabilize it with fusable interfacing, join the bits into thirty 12" squares, Then sew the squares together. The best part of the silk crazy quilt is the embroidery on each seam embellishing it and giving it character and charm. I made a small one (45" X 56")for my mom years ago and it was so much fun. If you find that you love quilting, you'll be hooked for life. In 1976 I was in the Navy and had a mid watch at the women's barracks. When I walked into the watch office the woman on duty was piecing a postage stamp quilt. She had a grocery sack full of tiny squares and several completed blocks. It hit me like a cold shower. When I got off watch the next morning I went home and cut up a bunch of old clothes, some tablecloths, several of my husband's shirts (he was overseas at the time) and I started quilting that day. Since then I've never lost the bug. I agree with bellaroma you should take a beginners class. It's better than teaching yourself and making all the mistakes that will cost you time and money and could ruin your drive to continue quilting. Learn the basics first. Cheryl P.S. I just scored a major stash of quilting fabrics at an estate sale. I got about 50 yards of various cotton quilting fabrics for $6. The lady was a quilter and had her stash separated into color groups, so I just scooped them out of her handy bins and into my shopping sack. Lord rest her dear soul, she had the biggest stash I've ever seen so I guess she was the winner.

Once something starts bugging you it is hard to "just let it go" -- I got REAL GOOD and taking things apart when I did my kaleidoscope quilt. (Even literally put darts in a couple blocks to get it to match right!) I noticed you have the four corners of blocks in the center perfectly matched -- the little muslin squares. I would let that intersection go as far askew as I needed to to get the black parts lined up. Since the muslin is roughly the same color it's really "one square" in the center -- IMO, matching it's points is not important. Where as the black/white intersections jump out at you. I would get those black squares matched up and sewn together. (Taking at least the one in like I suggested above) THEN, if I had a significant difference in size between the top and bottom muslin pieces in the center, I'd take the one that is larger and tighten its seam up -- Go up higher - maybe right below where the black starts and resew the seam angling inward ever so slightly so that by the time I reach the bottom my seam allowance is more than 1/4 inch -- I've sewn at an angle. Too extreme an angle and it won't lie flat but I think you can get away with enough to take up the slack. And once it's quilted who will know?! Clear as mud?!

Yes, we can't wait to see the pics. We love pictures. Carolyn

Mom2, In a way, BM's performance over the weekend might have been the best thing, a "silver lining" event. The skids aren't that thrilled to be with her, she is being so flaky that you don't have to work to hard to accomodate her and my goodness, how many people are at the house? It sounded like upwards of 15 folks conservatively with all of the various kids? Let her come to you and yours. And let her come correct! It sounds like since you cooperated, you can uncooperate now without a confrontation. She needs to fit in with your team, not the other way around. It sounds bad but it might really help you now. ''how you can be a good parent to one set of children and then completely ignore your other kids. how can one do that???" BTW, my skids, SS30 in particular, feel that my DH is being a better father with our son than he was with them. From what I know, they are right. Dh completely ignores his grandkids which of course feeds right in to the hard feelings. Lovehadley is right, often dads look at the 2nd set of children or child as a means to do things over in a better way. DH is not Super involved at the school or extracurriculars but he does show up for meetings, parent teacher conferences, Tae Kwon Do promotions, the occasional kiddie party if he knows the parents and so on. I know he did not do that with his first set of kids, SS in particular. My SS30 is still very angry about this fact. I think it's pretty common but what can I do? Tell him DON'T be a better father to our child because you weren't great with your first? Good luck.