Yes, I do have Factor Five Leyden and Day 2 of Raffle Quilt Adventures!

Well, after a week’s wait my tests came back for carrying the mutated gene for Factor Five Leyden. The doctor has recommended I see a hematologist at the University of Rochester to learn what I should or shouldn’t be doing! My sister (also a carrier) highly recommends that I take this step so will make an appointment when I get back from Lisa’s. I am heterozygous (one out of the two parents gave me the gene) which I had figured. I had recently read on one website that high blood pressure during pregnancy might be an indicator. That was the only thing that hinted to me that I might have the defective gene. Oh well, I feel worse for my girls who will now have to be tested as well. Most people never know they have this gene!

Day 2 of the raffle quilt assembly marathon is much more interesting! We had a relatively small group but one new face – Vickie Coykendall. She was a whiz at getting the pieces in the background together into rows! Poor Nancy Hicks came by just to pick up some small quilts from me for an exhibit case RAFA will be having at the Brighton Public Library and she got cajoled into taking out the paper from the back of the pieces (Jenna wasn’t there yesterday). We heard a lot of whining!! The paper isn’t so bad but many were made on this other foundation which was awful to get out! She left before we could find any more jobs for her to do!!

We made tremendous progress yesterday and Pat and Vickie worked effectively to make the 90 degree angle middle fit into the 60% angled background!! It was a challenge! Fortunately, we had decided the week before (thanks Jeanne Simpson) to only make the middle as part of the pattern set on a plain blue background. There is no way you could write instructions for what Pat and Vickie did!!

This is Pat and Vickie with some initial auditioning of the background and rearranging so that we could piece in straight rows.
Beverly Kondolf and Chris Wickert are also madly putting together background pieces. Pat Berardi and I were also madly putting these together and trying to keep Pat from the design wall!!
This is most of half of the quilt up on the design wall. You can see the progress along the edges where the background meets the center. We have one more sewing day scheduled next Monday and hope to have the whole background finished after that.
This is a closeup of one quarter of the background. You can see very little white space here as we made so much progress on sewing the background together. Thank goodness for multiple 8 foot design walls in Pat's studio/family room.