The Finished Sunburst Pictures and Another Improv. Quilt Top Joins the Quilting Queue

So I'm diving back into blogging after a short, two week hiatus. It feels a little awkward and ungainly after removing oneself from the rhythm of it all but I really find myself {unexpectedly} missing the musings about the journey. Quilting, stitching, posting, reading and/or commenting--it's all part and parcel.

Sunburst is finished!

Sunburst is the quilt that was finished up in time for the last quilt show. It's been the forever project for longer than I like to admit to. There was never the right time to post proper finish-it-up pictures, but overall, I am extremely happy with the results.

After a bit of agonizing, I ended up stitching a free-style Baptist Fan pattern over the entire quilt. This was one where I never got comfortable to 'just go for it', but continued free-hand marking throughout the entirety of the stitching. If you were to get very picky and critical, you would find areas with 5 arcs instead of 4 and in at least one spot, there is only 3. Love, truly, truly love how that ends up happening with this sort of stitching. Kind of ironic because the continued marking instead of 'eyeballing' only highlights my ongoing insecurity with complete and total abandon to freestyle!

Looking at Sunburst

Generally I would be feeling contented with the look of stitching by one completed row, two at the most, but this quilt left me second guessing until almost half of the stitching was completed. It left me feeling a little frustrated and antsy. Not that I could imagine anything that might look better, but I had this fear that using a Baptist fan pattern was not good enough, perhaps I was cheating the quilt. I know, so irrational! But you know how protective we feel about our babies.

Really love those trees

It was wonderful to pull the quilt out one evening and just smile at the relaxed and almost joyful look to the stitched arcs. Oh yes! That's what I was hoping to see! And then it was all totally fine. The perfectly spaced arcs of traditional fans look marvelous, but I'm a huge 'fan' of the human touch, and slightly-off perfect is what usually gets my motor running these days.

Looking perfectly snuggable!

And I also wanted to show a picture of one of the Adhoc Improv. quilts that I've been working on. It's the Score #5 from 'The Improv. Handbook for Modern Quilters' by Sherri Lynn Wood. I'm very happy to report that the quilt top is now finished! If you want more details on the progress of this particular quilt, you can check out my latest post over here.

Score #5

Now I just need to find time to work on that other Adhoc. Improv. project I started a couple months ago. So many things have been taking up our time lately and quilting happens in odd moments and random bits of free time. Honestly, it's been wonderful to feel and see the season start to change. Fall usually ends up being a more peaceful time for our family and believe me, I'm more than ready for the return to the slightly more normal around here...