Finishes!

Our recent quilt retreat proved to be quite productive in that I finished three projects - all WIPs or UFOs. Having these things "nagging" me over the past few weeks and months had become rather a burden, and it feels like a weight has been removed by having them done - to the flimsy stage, at least.

First, I concentrated on the final steps of the Star and Chain quilt - the Thimbleberries project which was left over from last year's retreat. The blocks were all completed, and through the early part of this month I had been working on sashing strips. Basically, all I needed to do at retreat was to stitch the rows together. That required a lot of pinning and pressing, but the resulting quilt is so worth it.

Next on my to-do list was to add borders to my swap quilt - actually, a mini-quilt. Six of us in the Frankfort Girls group exchanged blocks and made the arbitrary goal of having the mini-quilts together for retreat. I needed to add my borders. So here is that quick job completed.

I probably will hand quilt this mini using a Baptist Fan motif with big-stitches. This style of quilting appeals to me as does the muted, low-volume look of this quilt; I am glad to have a chance to see it all coming together.

My third finish of the retreat involved facing a repair job - fixing my Jelly Roll fiasco from last September. I made such a mess of that seemingly easy quilt, that I just stuffed it away for 6+ months in aggravation. It definitely had been the biggest "nagging" quilt of the three, so I did the best I could with it - the old make lemonade out of lemons theory - and I think this finish will be just fine. Should anyone study the construction, they will surely wonder why there's an odd seam going down the length of the quilt. Once it's quilted, though, I suspect it will be nearly invisible.

In a few days, I plan to share the ugly truths about the errors I made with this easy quilt. I need to get my thoughts sorted out, first, and figure out how to explain it simply. Honestly, I am not really sure what all I did wrong at this point.

So those are my finishes. Right proud of this, for sure - I gleefully checked them off my list. Gives me a "clean slate" sort of feeling.

Happy Quilting, Friends!