First Finish

Hello and a very belated Happy New Year to you all.

I deliberately refrained from posting earlier as I didn't want to get caught in the trap of listing my goals and resolutions for the year. It is always so depressing to look back and see what I didn't complete so my focus this year is to plod along and enjoy the process. No deadlines, no stress.

But having said that, I do have 2 aims for the year.

Firstly, l am going to limit my fabric purchases and sew from my stash as much as I can.

My stash is modest compared to most and yet I still have oodles and doodles of fabric which I couldn't possible get through even if I pieced every day of the year.  Quite a bit of my stash is older fabrics that I no longer gravitate towards but I have decided to use it or loose it.  To that end I intend to concentrate on scrappy quilts which will be donated to local charities.

Secondly, I have to get my flimsy's under control.

At last count I had 14 tops ready to be quilted, some of them have been in the pile for a very, very long time.  I am talking in excess of 6 or 7 years in some cases! What the?  Why am I accumulating them?  So, this year I am going to try to get one of those flimsy's quilted each month.  I think I said exactly the same thing last year but I am determined that this will be the year!

So on to my first finish for 2015 (well almost finished, just the binding to go).

Made from easy peasy 9 patch blocks in pretty blues and greens, I love how refreshing this top is. Sometimes the simple things in life really are the best.  Because the quilt is quite simple and linear I wanted to go to town with textural quilting.

I decided to quilt a flowering design from the book Free Motion Quilting by Angela Walters.  Whilst the design is not particularly difficult to do, it is time consuming and uses a ton of thread.  The texture is beautiful but in all honestly it probably isn't the ideal quilting design if you want a soft and cuddly quilt.  Being so dense the quilt is reasonably stiff but I am hoping it will soften after a wash and tumble dry.

Apart from finishing this quilt, I have completed a few bee blocks

and my first blocks for the Cherish circle of do good stitches.

and a little mini just because.

Until next time.

Sue