I have been wanting to join in A Lovely Year of Finishes for ages now, so glad I came across the site again! I am great at finishing quilt tops. I love cutting fabric, I have a lot of tops in various stages – fabric cut up, some blocks sewn, some rows sewn, and a handful of tops finished since moving here. But actually finishing a quilt – quilting and binding – that I am not so great at. It’s because I don’t feel comfortable doing free motion quilting and I don’t always want straight line quilting on something I make. I need to make practice sandwiches and just do it, but it is of course more fun to sew than to practice sewing.
For March I pick this quilt –
Forgive the bad picture, the lighting in my sewing room is not great.
This is my HST BOM (Half Square Triangle Block of the Month) that Jeni Baker did in 2012. Yes, two years ago. I finished the blocks each month as they were published – I sometimes make two blocks when something calls for one, it’s not that hard and I can make something extra with that block. In this case I used all 24 blocks I made to make a larger quilt.
I love the blocks. The fabric and colors that I picked out, I still love two years later. I just didn’t have anything I loved for the sashing. I went back and forth debating if I wanted to have sashing, but that also added to the size so I knew I wanted something. I didn’t use white for the white in the blocks, I used a white on white. I didn’t have enough to use it for sashing, but I wasn’t sure I wanted white anyway. I wanted a color. I don’t have too many solids in yardage in my stash (something I need to fix!) so I picked this orange. It matches the orange in a few blocks, but that’s it! I didn’t love the orange when I sewed the strips into rows, but it’s growing on it.
But this is so old. And I am so close to being done! The real test will be actually finishing the quilt completely.
I also need to figure out how to label my quilts, I don’t label anything and I know that is a bad practice.
Don’t be hard on yourself. Two years is not a long time to finish a quilt. And I love the colors you chose and especially the orange fabric you used as sashing. It really pops! As for labeling your quilts…..it can be as simple as taking a permanent ink pen and writing your name, city/state/location and date you finished the quilt on the back. Of course, you can get quite fancy and embroider information including name of the quilt, why you made it, pattern you used, who it’s for, etc, and then affixing the label on the back of the quilt. Glad you joined in the Lovely Year of Finishes!