Finally done... almost.

H:
The backpacking quilt saga continues but only for a little longer.

If you remember a few posts ago I talked about how I stalled on sewing the top half of the quilt together due to a "repinning" situation.  I bucked up the other day and, as best I could in our RV, I laid out the top half, unpinned then repinned the whole thing in order to get the "draft stopper" into its correct place.  A drafter stopper is a little bit of extra material that hangs off the perimeter of the quilt and will keep any cold air from seeping in a spot where the quilt itself isn't touching the ground.  Not exactly a necessary piece but was well worth taking the time to repin.

So enthused was I by my progress I set up the sewing machine and wrestled the behemoth into the machine, sewing together the layers except for 15 inches at the bottom.  I turned the quilt right side out and closed the gap at the bottom.  That last bit took way too long due to the slick material and me being too fussy about trying to make it look "nice." I finally gave up and just made it work.  It's ugly but it's warm.

I was inspired or maybe desperate.  I grabbed the second half of the quilt.  While the four foot wide spot of floor space was clear and Dave was at work I pinned the second half together and went back to the sewing machine.

Surrounding the quilt are growing piles of empty boxes (really need to break them down and store them out of our living space).  These boxes will be used to ship our supplies.  There's also a stack of camping gear in the upper corner, and yeah, it's sitting next to some bins of yarn.  

This photo shows the small amount of shaping done on the lower half.

Here's the lower half, right side, out with draft stoppers in place.  The top as you're looking at has the zipper that will attached to the top section.  The bottom bit without the draft stopper is will be folded under and sewn together to form a foot pocket.  This will happen after the quilting is done.

This is the top half, with the infamous drafter stopper in place. The left side is the head, the right is the zipper section that joins to the lower part. 

All that remains on the quilt is to sew the layers of this mountain of fluff together with quilting yarn.  I think this will wait until I go back to my cousin's for a visit because I'm moving on to sewing our backpacks!

More canned pineapple experiments are happening in one food dehydrator today and bunches of beans are in the other.  My next experiment will be tomato/corn meal crackers that I read about in a book.