Finished!

The green wedding quilt is finished! And my fingers are numb and sore at the same time from power stitching the binding!  i started at 5 am and finished at noon, making breakfast, packing a lunch, taking Lily to school and having a chat with the hubster as well.  

As you may or may not recall, in early April, my friend Judy asked me to make a green quilt that she could give at an upcoming wedding, and I agreed to do it. I've noted the progress of this project over these past 2 months and I'm so pleased to say that it's finished as I speak type.  I just have to pop it in the washer in order to get out all the markings and any other smudges which may have inadvertently got on the quilt. Before I do that I have to run to the store to get a new box of color catchers to protect from any bleeding of the dyes as it's washed.  When it's dried, I'll pack it up and take it to Judy in the Madison area tomorrow.  I hope she's as pleased with it as I am but moreover, I hope her niece and her new husband like it too.

As always, I struggled with how to quilt the borders.  The first one--multi-colored--was easy because I had a stencil that fit perfectly.  The third border is the diamonds and they were easy--just shallow arcs inside each side of the diamond.  The second and fourth borders are narrow strips of white flanking the diamonds and in those, I stitched a row of circles which I call pearls.  But the fifth border--the widest and again multi-colored--was the stumper.  I didn't have a stencil that would fit and I didn't want to futz around with Golden Threads paper because I was working on a deadline. So I browsed through a few of my quilting books and it suddenly occurred to me to resort to my favorite design--a simple medium sized meander--but to add a few leaves as I went since I  think a green quilt should have either leaves or shamrocks--or maybe frogs included. :-)

I'm happy with how it all turned out. Last night was my guild meeting and I took the green quilt for show and tell as well as the Jared quilt which is below.  I can't believe I finished both quilts in these past 2 months!  I'd had the Jared quilt pinned and I needed to get it quilted so I could take the pins out and use them to make the quilt sandwich of the green quilt.  Could I have simply gone out and bought additional pins? Of course, but that would have been easy so I didn't and now I have 2 finished quilts instead of just 1!

These 2 quilts represent the best and the worst quilting I've ever done.  I will be picking out the Jared quilting over the summer, block by block, and replacing it with better work as I go along.  With luck it'll be ready to go on a bed before winter strikes.  I was in such a hurry to get it finished that I did really sloppy work and every time I look at it, I just cringe!  When I've re-quilted it, I'll be able to look at it with as much pride as I feel when I look at the green quilt.

In addition to show and tell at guild, we had our first ever guest night and I think we must have had about 60 or so people there. (Usually we have about 25 members at a regular meeting, so this larger group was nice.)  We invited Debbie Fields, creator of Granola Girl designs, and this is her website if you want to take a look:  http://granolagirldesigns.com/index.cfm.  Debbie lives about 50 miles north of Menomonie and she's designed patterns and fabrics for many years, always using natural and "up North" themes like fishing, at the cabin, on the lake, snowshoeing, etc. Many of her patterns are appliqued and she does the most exquisite machine applique! If you want to make a quilt with an "up North" theme, I would encourage you to check out her site.  Debbie gave us a terrific trunk show and she had a lot of her items available for us to purchase so I indulged but just a little.  I'll sit down and go through the book I bought as I eat my lunch.

All in all, I think the guest night was a great success and maybe we'll do it again in the future.  That's all for now--gotta go and get color catchers!  And lunch!