And it’s done! #100days100 blocks.

Yup, I jumped the gun, the quilt is completely finished, with 8 more days of blocks to share. As I mentioned, I’m working on The Splendid Sampler, where I have no choice but to wait for each block to drop.

I won’t be participating in more of these quilt-alongs. It was fun, it stretched my creative juices. No more, I have so many quilt idea that I don’t need to repeat this experience.

Quilting with the walking foot was an interesting challenge. Since I’m too stupid to just quilt straight across the quilt, I ended up turning the quilt all the time. What a pain. At one point I cut the threads and only went in one direction, I had to painstakingly remove those stitches and start over, since the quilt top was pulling in one direction and I got creases in  the top.  I do like the checker board I got from time to time, but really, no one other than me will ever see these details.

Thank you Valley MQG, we recently had a hands on tutorial about how to face a quilt, so no binding shows on the front.  Here are my corner pieces. I think this method can be found online. Thanks to Lisa from Quilt Emporium in Woodland Hills, for the hands one demonstration. Seeing an in person demonstration is wonderful, which is why I need to take more classes.

Here is what the facing looks like on the back of the quilt. Label is in place!The finished quilt. I now really understand why most quilts have some kind of border. quilting up to the edge of the blocks did distort some of them. Luckily, this quilt is so busy, that once again, it goes completely un-noticed. This is also why I wanted to use the facing method to finish the quilt, I didn’t want even a quarter inch of border – in otherwords a binding, around these blocks.

Close up of a section where the quilting looks great, as well as the edge. I really like how the quilt isn’t framed by anything. By the way, I was concerned about how this would work on a large quilt. Usually this technique is reserved for art quilts and wall hangings. I’m here to testify, it works just fine.

The full back, I used up all of the bright print. This was a fabric I picked up at a sale to raise money for the LAMQG. A few things that are now my signiture on the back of quilts. They are almost always pieced, using leftovers from the front. If I have blocks that I didn’t use on the front, they find themselves decorating the back. In this case, the two blocks that really stood out as sore thumbs to me.

These blocks are appliqued on. If I have more leftovers,  I will piece them into the backing.

And now for the vanity shots.

I jumped into this project about a week late, without much thought. I chose to use fabrics I had on hand. (Yes, it’s true, I did buy about two or three new fabrics – so sue me!) I chose yellow which is a color I use as a highlight, not as the main color. So this really challenged me in a good way.

I had misgivings along the way. Thank you Instagram, some people really loved the color theme as it progressed. I’m not working in a vacuum, I do respond to criticism or aprobation.

Now that it is done, I love it. I’m keeping this one! As I was going along I wondered if it would end up in the gift pile. It’s not that I don’t like the quilts I’ve given away, but if I really, really love it, then it stays living with me.

Someone asked me if this is a new direction in my quilting. No, this was a great excercise in creativity, I’m sure some of the things I learned here will be incoroported but I don’t see my style of controlled scrappy changing any time soon.