The First 2016 Finish

Muddy Creek is now a finished quilt! My first 2016 finish in fact. It was actually quite difficult to get good pictures of this quilt as the center tends to fade in and out depending on the lighting. Not exactly my specialty! And see how yellow the quilt looks here? I will probably never get the whole lighting thing.

Muddy Creek is finished!

I was thrilled to find the perfect binding lurking right at home in my stash totes. One of the fabrics I used for backing fabric had just the right tones to tie everything together the way the quilt needed. And why didn't I think about that specific fabric while I was stitching the quilt? Luckily there was enough leftover and all was good. Any other color would have pulled attention away from the center of the quilt, which obviously, did not need to happen.*wink

A look at the binding

This was my quilt design, from start to finish, although you can be sure that there was influence from snippets of other quilts hiding out in the depths of my brain. I just figured things out border to border like I do so many times and let the quilt talk it's way through any resulting dilemmas. Working this way often makes for a challenge {trying to get pieced borders to fit especially}, but the end result is, in my mind, more charming and 'real'.

A closer look at the center

When I stitched the cross hatching on the purple check, I just started on one end and worked my way around the quilt in a circle. I used the grid of the fabric as my guide and made slight adjustments where the fabric didn't line up precisely {something I never made any attempt to do}. It makes for an interesting intersection when the circle is complete, but to my astonishment, the cross-hatching was only off by about half a grid. Wowsers, I couldn't have planned it any nicer than that! Very easy to make adjustments and have it all join up neatly in the end. Only a dedicated perfectionist is going to realize that my cross-hatching is not lined up perfectly all the way around the quilt! And who cares if they do notice? This post really resonated with me years ago and I confess to allowing it to directly influence how I approach my hand quilting today.

Love how soft it looks it here...

I had so much fun playing with these fabrics and colors, absolutely loving the old fashioned qualities and feel of this quilt. It feels like 'my version' of an antique quilt and I'm anxious to try my hand at it another time in the future. Perhaps with different colors? No matter where I go with quilting, it's the antique style quilts that continually draw me down the garden path.

So much better looking in this light, but the center sort of fades out...

This was a good finish to start the year out especially with all the challenges I've had of late. It's been oh, so relaxing and comforting to stitch on. Not demanding or finicky in the least.

Is anyone ready for the February Quilty 365? I've lost a bunch of followers lately and thought it might be from not posting so often or having a less than exuberant mood this month. Then I realized Google made some changes that forces people to set up an Google account to properly follow. I sincerely hope it doesn't cause problems with the February linkup as that would be frustrating for all of us.