Surgery, Zen, and Grant's Quilt Update

Grant's surgery went swimmingly; he has been discharged from the hospital, and he seems to be on the road to a full (and swift) recovery.  Well, his patience levels seem to have suffered a bit, and he's a bit crankier than usual, but I think he's allowed.   Between Grant being cranky and his mother's (typical) passive-aggressive routine, I'm ready to scream.

Oh, and this is fraught with peril:  Grant just put Keith Olbermann on, which ought to ruffle his parents' conservative feathers in about ten seconds.  I'm going to go hide now.  Perhaps I'll disappear into the craft-a-torium (formerly the crap-a-torium) and work on Zen.  This morning, I got all the blocks pieced, and this afternoon I got the blocks arranged on the dining room table.  I'm thrilled with how awesome it looks all laid out.

Speaking of Zen, I discovered just how right Marti "Bippendale" (I'm sorry, I just can't remember her last name, and Kara and I have been calling her Marti Bippendale for weeks now) when she recommended using an "assembly line" approach to working with lots of little pieces.  Rather than cutting the top & bobbin threads after each short seam, I assembled four units sequentially, leaving a quarter inch between each unit and then cutting them apart after the fact:

From Quilt Techniques

From Quilt Techniques

I was quite amazed at how effectively this approach speeded up the block piecing.  I did have a couple of misfires, though, where I put the next piece on the wrong end of the unit.  I also got down to the last four strips to assemble and decided that one combination was just too icky, but fortunately a simple swap fixed it beautifully.

Let me also clean house a little bit with a picture of Grant's quilt all finished:

From Grant's Cancer Convalescence Quilt

He was inordinately thrilled with his quilt and has cuddled with it frequently ever since he got out of the hospital.  Let's hope he can de-crank-ify himself before I strangle him with this quilt.  I may run away and join the circus before he goes back to work.  Although I'll be back in the classroom next week myself.

Okay, time to start sewing Zen blocks together!