No Worries

At last this shoo fly quilt is finished!!!  You have no idea how happy I am to cross this off my WIPs.

Because of being highly skilled at multitasking, I managed to finish this shoo fly quilt over the weekend while one the road to visit  my son (husband driving of course) and tailgating!  My kids kept teasing me that I was thinking of my next blog post titled  "This is my kind of tailgating!"  They knew something was up anytime I ask to have my picture taken when I asked my husband to take a picture of me hand stitching the binding.

My husband has been fired as the family photographer!

For several reasons, some of which I hope are obvious (if not, ask and I'll explain) and a few of which are personal, I decided a while back to name this shoo fly quilt No Worries.  

Towards the end of the process, however, I do believe the quilting gods were laughing at this choice of names as I had plenty of worries with this quilt.  It seems no matter how many times I did the math, I never had enough pieces to finish all the blocks so I would cut more center squares then more print squares and so on; I also worked on piecing the blocks with three different machines depending on whether I was in Orlando, Montana or at the quilt retreat in Minnesota resulting in three slightly different block sizes which made squaring up fun; lastly, I had to use two different machines for quilting because with only eight blocks to go, my Bernina  had a temper tantrum stopped cooperating, so I pulled out the machine I take to Sew Days and quilted the last few blocks that way.

Again, practicing my free motion quilting skills using a variegated thread by Mettler (#9814).  I quilted hearts inside the center squares and the other solid blue areas, while quilting a meandering stitch in all other areas.  After washing and drying, the quilt measures 52"x72".  I am sure everyone recognizes the pattern by Malka from her Color My Cloth book (so want to make her oversize shoo fly block quilt).  I adjusted the block size, number of blocks and added a 5" border.

The recipient is a sweet young lady who has been waiting very patiently for this quilt without any complaints.  By now she is used to her aunt being a slacker when it comes to delivering gifts on time....even when they aren't homemade.  I hope she will think the quilt was worth the wait.  

I am linking up to Megan's {Sew} Modern Monday.  Head on over to see some great quilty projects!