Hey Grandma! The Perfect Summer Finish

I told you. It's been time for finishing around here. One more quilt crossed off the list and it's already been used just this past weekend! Nothing like my girls having a sleepover for getting these medium sized quilts broken in just a little bit more.

Hey Grandma! a Finish

This quilt is 'Hey Grandma!', one that was inspired by a quilt hanging up at a flea market I went to last summer. It really didn't end up looking much like the original {tho I don't know for sure as I never took a picture!}. Regardless, the strange mixture of colors and fabrics were a direct result of that image in my head. All the lighter blue just happened to slide into the quilt in a sneaky, use-up-fabric-I-already-have sort of way. Amazing how it lightens and brightens and even makes everything seem happier instead of the moody vibe it should have had. There's something happening to my quilting where all choices seem to lead to a 'lighter' rather than 'darker' look these days, no matter what the original fabric pull may indicate....

Loving the odd fabric choices

The design is all my own of course, just another quirky flower in a long series of odd looking flowers. As you can probably tell, I often lean toward the traditional look of making repeat blocks in lots of similar but different looking fabrics. The border is Sujata Shah 'Cultural Infusion Quilts' inspired piecing and is easy peasy, but does require more fabric than I initially intended to use. Really fun to see the wedge spiked border pieces that {now} kind of remind me of a short little flower garden fence. I am so happy with the scrappy, make-do look and feel of it too. A pieced border doesn't have to be meticulously formal looking to wonderfully frame and add to a quilt.

A mix of machine and hand quilting works wonders...

This quilt feels like a fast finish for me, somewhere around one year from start to finish. Sometimes I just have a craving to get a certain quilt in the hoop and this one happened to fall into that category. Or maybe I was strongly avoiding having to make decisions on other quilt tops? That happens around here too, much as I hate to admit to anything so cowardly.*wink

It makes me smile just a little

I have one more quilt ready for binding and then it will probably be awhile until the next true-blue completion. Considering the amount of company, traveling, and other non-quilty distractions, I'm always blown away to see any serious forward progress in the summer.

Just another quirky quilt...

Sometimes I think the time spent in the quilt room or with the hoop must pass in a sort of fog induced haze, of soaking up quilty goodness just as fast as possible! You know, because it never seems like there can be enough time for any of it this time of year. August already???? 

I fully intend to carefully go through all my projects and re prioritize all the quilty lists. Sometime very soon because it's definitely time. Maybe even do a post on the fabric stacks as one of my readers keeps requesting. We'll see. I've got labels to put on for all the quilts entered into the quilt show coming up around the corner {and thread picking and trimming} and guess what? The last of our long weekend of company just left today. In fact, I barely moved the barricade of totes from in front of the quilt room out of the way before I sat down and started typing this post. It looks like we have two weddings to go to between the next three Saturdays which requires {TWO} trips down south to Oregon, from here in Eastern Washington, and lots of efficiency here on the home front to make it all happen without something mucking up the works. Yay! Maybe I'll just go lay down on the floor in the quilt room and take a nap... Why do we bother quilting in the summer time? Maybe we should just try and absorb the colors and textures by osmosis....