Hand Pieced QAL finish!

I am so glad that I joined the QAL.  Although, I have made a couple of hand pieced quilts I had never worked with blocks and so many points.  As with everything else we do, practice does improve our skills so that was a bonus.  As I said in a previous post the fabric I used was light and not as tightly woven as some quilting fabric, but I managed to hang in there.   Now when it came time to quilt it, the lighter fabric was a dream to quilt.  I pulled Jeana Kimball's book: Loving Stitches from my library and got a lot of ideas on how to quilt each block.

There also was a simple basket weave pattern in the book that I decided to use on the negative space.  I have never enjoyed using stencils basically for two reasons. 1. They never seem to be the right size for the area I want to use them. 2. They are flimsy and tracing or pouncing thru them is difficult for this girl.  I use my quilting rulers and make my templates when it comes to hand quilting.  The basket weave is a simple version and very easy to mark just using a ruler.

I started by marking a one inch  grid at a 45 degree angle going in both directions. Then I drew a line down the middle of each square and would alternate the direction in the next square.   One line is horizontal and one perpendicular.  Nothing hard about that!

I usually try to do something new or different with each quilt I hand quilt.  For this quilt I  used a varigated quilting thread.  I find it difficult to choose a color when the spool is varigated but I had this spool in my sewing box for several years. I had won it at a quilt show and just never found the right quilt until this one.  The pastel greens pink and yellows were perfect for this quilt.

I thought I would switch to gray when I started quilting the gray fabric but decided to continue with the varigated and really loved the bit of shimmer it added to those dull gray areas.  I can see using varigated threads in the future as they are a lot of fun.

The finished quilt is approximately 29x29 and so it quilted up pretty quickly. Also an artic blast came thru Texas last weekend and I sat and stitched every moment I had free.  Once I got going, I was having a hard time putting it down.  I must say I am pleased with the finish and will hang it in my sewing room.  

Now it is time to decide what is next.  Hand piecing a few more sun flower blocks this summer would be fun and I need to prepare my trailing vines for hand quilting.  There always seems to be plenty to choose from around here. I have joked that I don't need anymore quilts but somehow I always start another and have several tops waiting to be hand quilted.