A Finished Quilt!

One of the happiest events for a quilter is to actually finish a quilt (although starting one is quite happy too!) And if it's a pretty quilt that you really like, well that's even happier!

Happy Little Things hanging on my dining room wall

This is my version of "Happy Little Things" which was a quiltalong by Jacquelynne Steeves. Each month a free embroidery pattern plus a pieced block pattern was revealed. I enjoyed making this quilt so much, that it did not spend any time in the UFO closet at all!

echo quilting with the open toe foot

I enjoyed stitching a variety of machine quilting designs including stitch-in-the-ditch along the sashing with the walking foot, curved line quilting in the blocks, and echo quilting with the open toe free motion foot around the embroidery.

I quilted the last two borders at retreat. They were fun to quilt as the quilt was completely flat (which means I did a good job of measuring and attaching the borders). 

 2 border quilting designs (from the quilt back)

The piano key borders have a simple diagonal grid, the floral border has a wishbone design which I really love to quilt, and the last border has an uneven diagonal grid following the fabric design. It was wonderful to have a binding to hand stitch in the evenings while winding down for bedtime, and enjoying the quiet conversation with fellow retreaters.

"Happy Little Things" in the shadows

I took the quilt for an outing to try to get some good outside shots, because the colours in this quilt are hard to photograph with a flash. However, winter photography is challenging here in the winter. As it turns out it was too windy and too sunny to get a good shot but it was fun anyway.  Here it is on my favourite bridge with some weird shadows. Well, I guess along with all the happy things in life, we do also get some shadows!

This photo doesn't have the shadows and shows the true colour of the fabrics. It also shows some of the quilting. Not only am I happy that the quilt is finished, I'm so happy that it didn't fall into the river during the photo shoot!

Finished size of the quilt: 
42" x 52"

Linking up to Alicia's Finished (or not finished) Friday, Sarah's celebrations at Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Cheryl's Favorite Finish.