Guess who finished a quilt?

Love the text print border!

 This one was a long time in the making. Well, not a long time to make, but a long time to finish. The piecing went together pretty quickly considering the blocks were English paper pieced.

I started it June 2012 while I was pregnant with my now 5 year old. I cut my own card stock templates with a rotary cutter and ruler and just started hand piecing. My first star was all one color, but then I switched to bi-colored stars. Much better!

I made the blocks up pretty quickly. I tried to stick with a loose polka dot theme for the bright fabrics. 

Then I hemmed and hawed over what color to put between them. I initially wanted to use a bright aqua floral, but decided that it was a bit too crazy. So I chose a tone on tone black.

One of my 2013 goals was to finish it.  I didn't quite make it. (understatement)

From that point on it keeps popping up on my blog, usually in Work in Progress or Finish Along Goal posts. This is a picture from May 2014 when it showed up as a FAL goal. I was in the process of appliquéing the borders on (if you look carefully, you can see the pins).

I mentioned in that post that it had been sitting for awhile, and it was going to sit a lot longer. I finished appliquéing on the borders in 2015 but I didn't get it basted until Spring 2017. Then it sat around for six months while I debated how to quilt it. I wanted to do something super fancy, perfect, and quilt show worthy, but in the end I opted for just getting it done.

You can see the quilting better on the back. The diamond area is criss crossed with straight line quilting and the borders are covered in swirls. I am planning on adding some bright chunky hand quilting around the blocks, but for now it is finished!

5 1/2 years later. :)

I have been thinking about why I put quilts away and don't work on them and it always has something to do with hitting some sort of snag. Blocks don't fit right, or I can't figure out how to quilt it, or I don't want to baste or bind it. I really don't like basting and binding....

I think I just need to plow on through. The problems usually aren't as big of a deal as I think they are and when I push through, I get a pretty quilt!

And I get to pass something off my Q4 FAL Goals!

Quilt Stats

Started: June 2012

Finished: December 2017

Size: 58" x 76"

Techniques: English paper piecing and applique (100% hand pieced!)

Machine quilted and bound