A finished quilt!

It's not very often I get to celebrate a finished quilt since I have so many projects in various stages of completion. But today I have a special finish to share!

This is one of Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilts called Chilhowie started in November of 2022. It was during the throws of covid lockdowns when this project was started and I did not want to shop for any of the fabrics. So I used scraps from my stash and sorted them by value (not colour).

I finished my quilt top in September 2023 and then it sat in my UFO closet. My friends Annie and Lynn finished their quilts and donated them to my guild's community comfort project and they are gorgeous quilts.  Annie made her quilt the size that the original pattern was with 16 blocks, and Lynn made hers a bit smaller with 12 blocks. My version is even smaller using 9 blocks, and the finished size is 59" x 59".

It's always amazing how quilts can be made from the same pattern and yet look so different!

This is a photo of one of the blocks in my quilt. The predominant red fabric is an old Kaffe Fassett fabric called Millifiore and I barely had enough of it to finish the 9 blocks and have a bit left for the corner pieces and some of the binding. You can see how scrappy the blocks are! When I was sewing the blocks together I called it "the hot mess express" wondering if this was even worth the effort to sew! But it magically turned out to be a great scrap quilt!

My quilt top was donated to the guild and was quilted by Becky Fiedler on her domestic machine using a fun swirly design. Can you see the quilted circles and the texture it has on the back of the quilt? So fun!

Then I happily received the quilt back to put the binding on and I had the opportunity to revisit the wonderful variety of scraps in this quilt as I stitched on by. Those border blocks used up sooo many scraps!

Can you see the variety of reds in the binding? It was such a pleasure to use up so many scraps and to see this quilt to the finish line! It has inspired me to move more projects toward completion before I start the guild's summer mystery project (and maybe I should finish last summer's mystery first?!?!) 😜