Third Finish of the Year!

Plain Jane is finished! I can't believe how much texture there is throughout and how much more obvious it is after washing/drying the quilt. I literally did this little gulp/gasp thing just taking it all in.

Plain Jane

Wowsers..., isn't it incredible when our quilts just keep on surprising us? We think we have it all figured out, but it's not over till the last stitch, till it's washed and dried and we can see it with all the lovely bumps and crinkly crumples.

So much lovely texture

There's so much I love about this particular quilt, starting from the basket blocks clear through to the hand stitching. This entire quilt is made from my stash too, using all kinds of fabrics I was starting to think might be waaay too dated to blend properly into the background like I like them too. It will definitely make me think harder about some other fabrics I've been reluctant to use recently!

Not so 'plain' anymore

There was also a lesson in this quilt about never giving up on a quilt top if you're ever unsure if it's truly finished or not. I came back to this quilt top at least a year later (maybe more) and added the applique on. At the time I finished the rest of the quilt top, I literally had no ideas for add ons. And it was a nice enough quilt top the way it was. But... down the road, on one of those days when I pulled my quilt tops out of the drawer and considered, it looked plain and even kind of down in the dumps about not having any embellishment. I ignored the feeling in my gut a time or two but eventually I couldn't help myself and started throwing some of my applique parts and pieces at it until I had an idea for what this quilt needed.

And more texture...

I get comments all the time that this quilt top is not a 'Plain Jane' and that the name doesn't seem to fit. I know it doesn't. Now.

The BACK of my (experimental) improv. quilt

And yes, Plain Jane was the third finish of the year because I slipped another quilt into the queue. I made a small improv. quilt for Sherri Lynn Wood when she put the call out for volunteers to 'test' her quilt directions for the book she's publishing in 2015. It was an extremely frustrating process at first because I am completely unfamiliar with true Improv., but it was also fun and even a bit exhilarating after I got the hang of it. Or maybe I didn't ever really get the hang of it because my quilt wasn't one of the quilts chosen! A bit of a disappointment for a few days and then I snapped my chin back up to face forward again. Really, it was a great experience for me with lots of good stuff to learn.

I'm not supposed to share the front of the quilt with you until the book gets published, but the back will hardly give you clues to any special pattern directions! The hand stitching was all done in Perle Cotton in big fat circles (a first for me) across the quilt. You will definitely be seeing more of that from me as the quilting went lickety-split and I looove the look of it. Even though I really don't like the whole 'I did this wonderful quilt, but I can't show you 'cuz it's special, blah, blah, blah' kind of posts, I decided to show you a pic of the big stitch quilting circles for when I refer back to them. And you know I will. All about how I'm going to do better at them this time around and you're not left scratching your heads wondering when I ever did them the first time around.....