Finally...a Finish!

Yesterday I was able to finish the first quilt since breaking my shoulder way back in December. My previous finish was actually much earlier...in November...and so you can see it's been a long dry spell. While I had good intentions of doing some housework, I spent most of the day finishing up the stitched inchies. It was an excellent demonstration of the quilters' maxim: Quilting forever...housework whenever.

So...ya wanna see?

If you read yesterday's post, you might remember I was undecided about how to quilt it, although I had lots of ideas. It turns out it was quilted with a little of everything. Straight lines in the narrow spaces between embroidery motifs...

Swirly-gigs where there was room (technical quilting terms...try to keep up)...

A fancy stitch from my sewing machine in the pink border. (If memory serves, this is Stitch #10 on my Bernina 750QE.) It's been a while since my machine was in for service. It needs to go in again soon. The machine should automatically adjust for stitch width, but when it stitched to the extreme left of this stitch, the needle was hitting the stitch plate. Obviously, it wasn't hitting straight on because it didn't break the needle, but I could hear it rubbing against the edge of the opening. I had to make the stitch narrower. Yeah, Big Bertha is letting me know she's tired of this pandemic preventing her spa treatments. Aren't we all?

Okay, and then a sort of pointy feather in the outer border. Birds, right?

Here's how it looked from the back.

My arm was hurting by then, and so I took a break. When I came back, I squared it up.

There was a scrap of leftover binding in my collection, and I had more yardage of this pastel stripe to make it long enough. The quilt ends up 18 x 22 inches.

During the hour we sat watching the news, I finished hand-stitching it, and voila! One finished quilt. Wanna see it again?

Here's how it looks from the back:

This was my quilt for March's

so I'll link up there when the time comes.

That was pretty much the end of my sewing day. I took just a little more time to sandwich my second mini for the month. This one should be very quick to quilt. I'm just going to do diagonal straight-line quilting on it.

I'll get that one finished today. When that's finished, I want to get started on my challenge quilt for the next Endeavourers reveal on May 1st. The prompt for this challenge is "color theory." I know what I'm going to do, and I pulled the fabrics I'll be using yesterday. I'll only be able to show you little peeks of this quilt as I make it, but you can see the fabrics. Intriguing, no?

It rained for most of the day yesterday, but the sun came out for a while just as it was setting. It made for some dramatic skies. From our front patio, it looked like this:

From our back patio, it looked like this:

And, hey...Happy Last Day of Winter!!! Spring starts tomorrow!

I am so ready to show you every blooming thing as it opens up.

So, today I really am going to take another stab at housework, but I'll probably finish my little quilt first. I do have my priorities. I'm trying a new recipe in the slow cooker today. I'll report back tomorrow if it's any good. And maybe I'll get to that lemon meringue tart today too. Morning is always full with possibilities.