Passion Quilting

A early finish... or was it a late one?!

Hurrah! Hurrah! It is finally done! I can now put Boxcar Suzie on the charity shelf and move on to other projects, frankly I am overjoyed to see the last of her. I've been looking at it too long and thinking about it too much. 

My feelings about this quilt have definitely done a 180 degree flip and I think that's interesting. I don't know if anyone else has had that happen with a particularly long project it seems there is this point where your excitement falls flat and you are just ready to be finished.

Contrary to what I may have implied I am still very proud of this quilt, it is not a bad job for only a second piece and it definitely was a labor of love. I did have one of my guild ladies ask me why I didn't set it aside to work on something else for awhile until I regained my excitement about it, at the moment of that question I was unable to give an answer. After thinking about it for a few hours I realized that it is simply in my nature to not leave any project unfinished and I also have the feeling that if I had left it, it may not have gotten finished because I would have probably ended up resenting the quilt for not finishing itself and making me feel guilty lol. 

I also am getting the feeling I won't have very many UFO's in my stash, no matter how terrible I think they might be, I really didn't think I could be that meticulous and methodical. Seriously, I ended up staying up until 3am to finish the binding because I had started it earlier that evening. Perhaps it's just obsessive insanity that overcomes quilters? 

I am particularly proud of how the back worked out with the graded thread colors, I was very worried that it would look horrible once I added the dark pink thread. The picture shows just how nicely it graded, I hope anyone else reading this gets inspired to try grading thread colors it really can look lovely.

Front View

The sea oat flower pattern at the center really does pull it all together and helps make the box pattern on the back really stand out.

Back view

The binding ended up being from a completely different fabric altogether, talk about frustration when you sew together all your remnants after measuring and being certain that you had the right amount and coming up this ----> ............ <------ short. /headdesk. 

Then when I went to the guild to use the table so I could square it up and looking for something that might work instead, I nearly ran across another disaster!  I had a couple of ladies help me pick out something that would work relatively well and they even measured the quilt, worked out the math for me told me exactly how many strips I would need, basically everything but the cutting hah! 

I did however listen to that little rebellious voice inside my head telling me that I need to cut an extra strip, even though I was assured that I didn't need to multiple times, had I not I would have been 80 inches short, as it was I ended up trimming off only 16 inches. I have learned to listen to that little voice ;)

All is well that ends well so they say!

Passion in Creation!