Quilting against the clock

When I originally set myself a timeline for a quilt that needs to be finished by a certain deadline, I try to pad it a little, to leave myself room for the inevitable SNAFU.  It doesn't always work out the way I'd like it, but I don't like to deal with more stress than I have to, and I hate to make quilting stressful.  I enjoy it, after all!

However, back in late October, I thought I had plenty of time to finish this quilt before the November 1 deadline--that being my grandmother's 90th birthday celebration.

I used the Granny Square tutorial (appropriate, no?) from Blue Elephant Stitches, and a jelly roll each of Butterscotch & Rose by Fig Tree Quilts and Moda Bella Cream.  The finished quilt is a great throw size, about 60" by 70".

But I wound up with a slight snag.  See, I was pushing to finish this by November 1, and even had the whole last week of October off, but then Hurricane Sandy happened on October 29.  Here in CT, we knew a day or so in advance that landfall was imminent, and that power outage was inevitable.  See, we dealt with Irene the previous year and were without power for 4 days, and then had a snowstorm that followed Irene and were without power for 8 days.  So we stocked up on firewood, charcoal for the grill, bottled water and canned goods, and put away anything that might be blown around the yard.  And then I quilted like my life depended on it, so that the electricity-reliant part of the process would be done before we lost power.  I finished machine sewing the binding to the front of the quilt at around 5pm...

The back fabric is another Fig Tree fabric from a different line, Mill House Inn, and the binding fabric was a serendipitous find at JoAnn's a couple of years ago.

And then a scant few hours later, we had this happen.

40ft pine tree blown over on our cars.  :(

Which looked like this in the stark light of morning the next day.

In any case, all's well that ends well--the insurance and tree service people were hugely helpful, my car's been replaced (the madman's SUV was actually fine), I finished the quilt although poor Gram's party was put off by a week--my parents and grandmother were all without power for over a week, and the madman and I were lucky to only be out about four days this time.  

And Gram?  She loves her quilt.