2nd FINISH FOR 2019!

I finished this lap size donation quilt a few days ago, so I thought I would show you.  I cut the 2 1/2" squares years ago and had some of them sewn into 4 patches.  Then, I finally got them out and put this together randomly.  I love scrappy quilts.

I quilted it with swirly circles and for the border I used the braided wheat design by Lori Kennedy at The Inbox Jaunt.  It took me a while around the border to get it pretty good.

This last picture shows the border up close in a better section of it.  I won't show you the first section and I probably should have practiced it more before I started quilting it on the quilt.  

I also used a blanket stitch to stitch down the binding.  A friend at my quilt guild does that and I thought it looked pretty good.  With this blue/white design, you can barely see the blanket stitching any way.  Actually, I don't mind sewing the binding down by hand - it's more relaxing.  But, the main thing is that it is DONE!

JUNGLE WALL HANGING

I finished quilting this jungle wall hanging today, but it's still not finished.  I need to bind it and will get to that later.  I wanted to share something that I think is really exciting.

I joined the American Quilter Society a couple years ago and have been receiving their magazine 6 times per year (I think).  It is a great magazine and one of my favorite parts is Lori Kennedy's "My Line" article.  If you haven't seen her quilting designs, you need to check out her blog here.

Her article in the January 2019 issue caught my attention because it was a fish design.  I've used some of her designs before (I don't remember if I had told you all about who invented them or not).  It is amazing to me how easy they are to follow.  She shows what to do for each step.

I decided to quilt the fish around the border.  You can't see them very well because of the colored strips, but I took some close up pictures.  They aren't perfect, but I like them a lot.  These first 2 pictures show how I quilted the panel.  I quilted around the animals and along lines of other things, like the leaves and anything that I could follow lines on.  I didn't quilt on everything - that would have taken forever!

Maybe you can see where I quilted along the outside of the elephant and more on his ear.  Also the sea weed above and below his trunk.

 Here's a close up of a fish in the top corner of the border.

Another close-up.

The view from the back.

I hope if you are doing your own quilting, that this might give you some ideas and that you will check out Lori's blog.  

I still haven't made my goal list, but I'm thinking about it.  Maybe this week I will take a few minutes to write down a list of my UFOs.  Thanks for visiting!

CAR QUILT

I finished quilting this car quilt.  The embroidered blocks were a set of partially done blocks that I picked up at an estate sale.  I finished the embroidery and put them together into a baby quilt/wall hanging size quilt.  

When I was trying to figure out what to quilt in the border, I went to a favorite blog for quilting designs, The Inbox Jaunt.  Lori Kennedy has some amazing quilting designs with directions for how to make them by free motion quilting.  I found this race car design and when I read her step by step instructions it look pretty easy.  Below is my first try at it on my practice scrap.    

It seemed easy and I made them all around the border of the quilt.  They aren't perfect, but I like them anyway.    Here are a couple close ups of the cars as quilted in the border.  They aren't real visible because of the plaid fabric, but maybe you can see how they turned out.  No two of them are exactly the same.

I definitely will continue to use Lori's ideas - they are amazing!