Jumping Jax Flash

Finished the top of the Jumping Jax Flash quilt! This was started at Asilomar in an Empty Spools seminar with Judy Niemeyer in February of 2014. That was an intense week of sewing, and when I came back I paused to work on the Pinwheels for a little while as a change of pace. Suuuure. As you may have read elsewhere on the blog, I did manage to finish all 6 of the Pinwheel tops and sent them all off for quilting.

That would have been fine except that I sent them in batches, so the first ones were home before the others had even left--meaning it was time to bind them and start sending them off to their new homes! In the meantime I also managed to herniate another disk--or maybe two--a very unpleasant pastime and one I do not recommend. Spinal surgery is never fun and do you know, when they say don't lift anything heavier than 5 lbs, well, a big quilt weighs more than that. Makes it hard to sew binding when you can't lift the quilt!

Now that I'm 4 months post-surgery and on into PT, I'm able to do a little more all the time. Standing up is still an issue so sewing sitting down is a good thing. I did fine at Asilomar this year, thanks to frequent rest breaks and their efficient jitney service. 

Ironing while sitting on a stool isn't the easiest thing, but it does save the back!

So here are a few more views. This quilt was all done with stash fabrics. The turquoise background is all the same even though there's quite a few areas that are purple! Cutting it up emphazies different parts of the whole fabric.



Next step will be quilting it. I have a print fabric for the back that has echoes of the same stars, and the batting as well. I do plan to quilt this one myself. With all the seams and centers, I think it could be a longarmer's nightmare, and I enjoy machine quilting so it will be fun.

I'm looking forward to making the stars pop and minimizing some of the seam lines. You can see in the shot on the ironing board how the border spikes are joined to the body, and in the photos where the border is sewn on, there's almost a line. The border, by the way, is the same fabric as the border spikes--again, a lot of different colored areas in the one piece of batik. One of the things I love about batiks is all the variation in color!

Took the quilt top out onto the lawn for a final "beauty shot" since I don't really have a big enough space inside!



Yes, the grass is brown. We're in a severe drought situation here so there's not much lawn watering going on.