I've Got a Quilting Problem

I love to piece quilts.  Love it.  I love gazing at fabric, putting together the perfect combination.  I love perusing through patterns, picking the best ones to suit my fabric choices.  I love measuring and cutting, rolling my rotary cutter along the fabric in perfect lines (I've only once needed stitches because of this). I love sewing the straight lines, putting all those little pieces together to make a beautiful quilt.  Oddly, one of my favourite parts of quilting is laying out all the squares and staring at them until my eyes hurt trying to figure out the best layout where no two pieces of the same fabric touch or are even close.

And that's really where my love affair with quilting ends.  The whole 'quilting' part: not so much my favourite.  So, amongst my boxes of storage I've got a plethora of pinatas... I mean quilt tops... waiting to be quilted, with absolutely no motivation to do so. Seriously, I probably have ten tops finished. 

I come by it honestly, though.  My mom has over 20 in the same state as mine.  My problem is, I want to hand stitch some, but that's a big undertaking, and I want to machine quilt the rest, but not just stitch-in-the-ditch, but the really fancy swirly, loopy kind of machine quilting.  My old Brother sewing machine is really just not up to the task.  I NEED this:

I could hire myself out at $150 a quilt for, oh, 20 or so quilts, to make it worth it.  I also will need to buy a new house to fit the thing in, and commit to doing nothing but quilting the rest of my life... but I'm okay with that.  With something this incredible to work with, why would I want to do anything but?

But, until then, I guess I need to get motivated and get working.  These are the quilts I want to finish before I start any more.

My picnic quilt, which at the rate autumn is approaching here in Calgary, will probably not be used until next season.

The sweetest baby quilt, which is offered as a prize to the sister who has the next girl (unless I have a girl first, and then they get nothing because all my creative juices will be put to creating things for my own darling.)

The third of these rag quilts I've made, for the next boy that is born that I love enough to give a quilt to.

A car mat for my boys, probably for Christmas, by the look of my to-do list here.

I'm heading to Shuswap today, and I plan on getting at least a few of these done while I'm there.  I'm hoping my mother-in-law will help me with the hand sewing of the girl baby quilt and the car mat. The picnic quilt I am sticking to the ditch, and the rag quilt I don't have to quilt at all: yeah!