The Quilt is Finished!

 

 The last of the five quilts has been finished!! And just in time.  As you can see above the first daffodils of the season are up and ready to pop (I took this photo at my Mom's home and from the looks of it, the weeding season has begun as well.)  Roger and I have been up on the mountain for a couple of short hikes in the perfect hiking weather, right around 58-60 degrees.  We've also walked around the yard to determine what needs to be done.  Looks as if I can leave my quilt cave and start living in the sun.

 

This quilt was started last year as a challenge with my quilt group, Feed Dogs (cute name, right?).  Each month we were given a new strip to quilt and by July the top was finished.  Over the next few months, others in the group brought theirs to show off while mine remained folded up in a corner of my quilt room waiting for inspiration for the quilting design.

 

 

I decided to use this quilt as an opportunity to practice more free motion quilting stitches on my machine starting with the tight spirals above.  They were placed in the more open negative spaces of the applique strips.  I used stippling, string hearts, a lot of straight line quilting and finally tear drop loops in the border.  



It took a long time to quilt and almost as much time to hide the starts and endings inside the quilt.   I learned a lot from working on this quilt, not my favorite by far, but a keeper never the less.

 And with that the quilting season has ended.  We have lots of yardwork to do, cabin stays (going up today), and road trips - lots of road trips.  We just changed the time back to daylight savings time (lost an hour last Sunday) and the sun sets are slowly moving north again across Antelope Island.