Our house was built in the early ’50′s, so all of our electrical outlets downstairs were of the old ungrounded two-prong variety.  We wanted to upgrade the wiring so we could stop using those annoying little adapters to plug in stuff like computers and TVs.  Not to mention the safety issues, of course.

So the electrician was here all day yesterday and most of today.

We learned that whoever originally wired the house was very creative as far as circuits went.  One circuit in particular had the refrigerator, the coffeemaker, the microwave, AND the washing machine on it.  The electrician was amazed that I had never tripped the breaker, even though I regularly used three out of four of these appliances at the same time.  Another circuit runs all over the house, and took some detective work to figure it out.  All I can say is that this guy earned his money.  For a while I thought he might be a permanent guest, but he did manage to finish the job today.

So in between the electrician turning the power on and off and working all over the house, I did manage to work on the quilt-as-you-go strip quilt I started the other day.  I finished the blocks yesterday, and joined them today.

So what do I think of quilt-as-you-go?  Well, it’s definitely not a time-saver.  I had to resort to pinning to keep the quilt batting and backing from shifting when sewing down my strips.  Kinda fiddly.  But the blocks did look good when they were done.

What about joining them?  Easy, but mindless and time-consuming.  It takes five seams to join each block.  See this qayg tutorial for the details.  I thought I would NEVER get done sewing the 30 blocks into six rows of five each.  It does go faster when you’re sewing the rows together, though.

That said, though, I can see where this joining technique would be very handy when making larger quilts.  I think my next project will be made in panels, instead of individual blocks.  If I made four 10-inch wide panels that were 45 inches long, it would be a lot faster to join them instead of the individual blocks.  Perhaps like a Chinese coin pattern.   I could also piece blocks as I normally do, join them into segments, machine quilt the segments, and then join them, like the mile-a-minute quilts.

The upside:  I’m using up strips and making quilts to donate, too!  Stashbusting is a good way to use up old fabric that’s been hanging around far too long.

I have to say that the back of the quilt looks really cute, with the sashing outlining the individual blocks.  Pictures will follow in a day or two.

This picture looks gray, but it's really a medium-olive green.

This is the green from mixing a little black into the yellow dye. It's really a much nicer-looking green, not this washed-out gray!

Here are the results of my dyeing escapade the other day. Putting the heating pad under the fabric did seem to help set the dye, as very little dye ran off when I washed and rinsed the fabric. I’m somewhat annoyed with my camera, as its not showing the colors correctly. Probably operator error!

These are a little darker, but the picture is pretty close to how they really look.

These aren't as blotchy as they look in the picture; but the colors are pretty close to reality.

This is really more brown than pink.

For some reason, my camera decided this was pink, but it's really red-brown instead!

The color on these two pieces are pretty close. I was trying to mix colors.

This was my attempt at color mixing. These are pretty close to how they really look.