Love Me Do

Don't hate me, but I just finished another quilt. Yep, a true, blue finish with binding and everything. All it needs is a label and I'm gifting this baby sometime over the holiday weekend. It's been at my longarm friend's since early this spring and I was just sorta inquiring about an ETA a couple weeks ago.

Love Me Do

 Agghh!! She totally panicked--lots going on, no time for quilting etc.--so I backed off immediately and told her 'no pressure'. And then figured I wouldn't get it until sometime next year. Imagine my shock when she called up last week and said, 'Hey, do you want this now so you can start working on the binding?' Yes!!

I started this quilt back in 2015, wanting to play with some bright fabrics and also, wondering if I had what it takes to make a lone star. Turns out the diamond piecing is a little more than I want to work with, but overall, it's been a very fun project. So challenging as it's out of my normal comfort zone and that makes for lots of twists and turns of course. But that's the way I most love to work.

Adding another finish to the 2017 list!

I handed this quilt top off to my friend for longarm quilting thinking it would be easier than doing hand quilting. It's just so busy, I figured the hand quilting wouldn't really show up well enough to make it worth the effort. About that. I'm starting to realize that my friend and I have a bit of a communication issue when it comes to what we each like and expect out of machine quilting!

I tend to want very loose, open style quilting and she loves very tight, compressed looking stitching. As you can see from the picture below, she did a little of both and so of course, the star poofs quite a bit in comparison to the tighter stitching. It's so funny because we always talk about what I want and then I turn to her and say, 'well, whatever you think will work best'. Maybe not the best way to handle things because I do want what I want and am sometimes surprised by the end result. Overall though, I trust her with my quilts and know she will do the best job she can. That means a lot.

Can you see the difference in quilting?

And as always, I took advantage of the opportunity to include some hand quilting. It was practically begging for more stitching in the very center blue/green area of the lone star and also the letters--they looked too simple without. So it was a great way to add more 'personal touches' to the quilt and make it a little more mine again. Honestly, I'm one that prefers to say the entire quilt was pieced and quilted by me! And it's tempting to go back and add more stitching through every diamond area as well, but I'm telling myself to just quit with the perfectionist tendencies. This really is a fun looking quilt, it should survive some 'unequal' quilting areas!

Love Me Do in the stairway

Overall, I'm fairly happy with this quilt and loving the happy, cheerful vibe. I'll be gifting it to one of my nephews and his lovely new wife over the coming weekend. This will be the second 'marriage quilt' in what will now probably turn out to be a years long project. Big families are funny about things like that.

Such a sweet quilt

Oh, almost forgot to mention. This lovely finish had a bit of red bleeding when I washed it up. Thankfully it wasn't horrible and another wash with some extra color catchers and some Biz took away the worst of it. I always prewash my fabrics so it annoys me to see the colors bleed. Guess I have to do a 12 hour soak with all my red fabrics to make 100% sure it never happens though and that's just not going to happen. Thankfully, this one wasn't ruined and the little bit of pale pink left in the quilt doesn't even show to those who don't know! Best get going--lots to do for the Thanksgiving holiday. The family think the food is the most important part....