A long time coming…

There’s a finished quilt to share today! It’s been almost a year to the day since I pulled fabrics for this quilt… tick tock goes the clock.

I’ve shared a lot of details about the making of this one, and today is the final detail — how I quilted all that empty space! I used this really great pattern I found on Youtube, Loopy Clams from Lynn Durbin. Of course, she was quilting on a longarm, so I had to adapt it a little for my Juki.

This quilt was planned for my Mother In Law from the very start. Purple, teal, yellow, peach, all her favorite colors. Tiny happy sheep because she’s a knitter. I even bought the sheet to back the quilt when I was with her (she didn’t suspect a thing).

The inner hexagon is quilted with several different quilting patterns. Mostly variations on dot-to-dot quilting and big easy loops, with a few spirals thrown in for fun. There was also a fair bit of “following the fabric” like on those AMH flower prints. I just quilted around the flowers.

I used a scrappy binding, from mostly the same fabrics in the middle hexagon. Machine stitched as is my usual.

One thing I did learn with this quilt: Square your quilt top before you quilt it. There was so much quilting that I ended up cutting off. I could have saved myself at least 2 hours, and it’s a lot easier to fold and manipulate a top than a quilt.

When we took pictures today, it was a fair bit windier than is normally ideal, so there are a few outtakes…

Also, I handed my camera to my husband (Quilt Holder Extraordinairre) and he caught this one. It may just be my favorite picture of me ever.