QUILTING AND BINDING FINISHED ON GRADUATION QUILT

It feels so good when a quilt is all finished.  And after the 25th anniversary quilt, with "custom" quilting, it felt so good to do an "overall" quilting job.  

I again used Angela Walters "Free Motion Quilting" book for inspiration.  In fact I used the same quilting design as I did on the Virginia Bound quilt (in header).  Except, this time, I think I finally got the hang of the hook in the "Swirled Hook" design.  Some of these same shirts were used in Virginia Bound and they aren't used up yet!

They aren't perfect, but maybe you can see a few of the hooks in the close-up pictures.

This is Bonnie Hunter's "Star Gazing" pattern and again, even though there is a lot of piecing to do, it seems to go pretty fast when you follow each section in the pattern as she describes it and get the chain piecing going.

I didn't have one piece of fabric that I could use for the whole back, so I pieced it (just like Bonnie does)!  I had some of the musical fabric left from the front - mostly used in the red and light colored triangles.

The whole back.

I also had some "historic" fabric pieces and some blue that went with it all and pieced it together the best that I could.  I think you can see the quilting better in this section below.

I still need to make a label and plan to do that this next week.  Woo Hoo!  Now I can get on to some fun UFOs, hopefully!

We found out that our DGS will be going to college in Minnesota, so I think this will help keep him warm for the cold winters they have there.

Oh, BTW, I didn't start anything new in April.

CAUGHT UP ON BASKETS

I totally caught up on my baskets for a few days until I get the next group in the mail!  

I decided to get busy and quilt the Ohio Star donation quilt made out of men's shirts.  This quilt will be for a teen aged boy.

I did a cinnamon roll in each square of the stars.  I saw this type of quilting in one of Kim Diehl's books.

In the inner border made out of brick size blocks, I tried some different quilting designs from the book, Free Motion Quilting by Angela Walters.  She has some really good "modern" designs for filling in areas.  It doesn't have to be a modern quilt, but I probably wouldn't use some of these on a CW type quilt.

I have found a lot of good ideas in Angela's book.  The swirl that I used in the outer border is a lot easier than it looks and she has great diagrams on how to do it.  Once I get the binding sewn down, I'll take another picture of the whole quilt so you can see that border better.

TRIP RECAP AND TWO WINS

We returned home from our 50th anniversary reunion with our sons, DILs and grandchildren and our trip to New England to celebrate on Tuesday.  Just a few facts:

Days away from home:  52

States covered:  17

National Parks/Historic sites visited:  7

State parks camped in:  3  (the rest of the time we camped in private RV parks)

Bloggers visited:  2

Relatives visited (besides our immediate family):  2

We had a wonderful trip, with beautiful weather most of the time, but it was very good to get home.  Now we are still trying to dig out from under the piles of mail and laundry stuff that needs putting away!

While on the trip I won 2 giveaways!!  The first one is this book Free Motion Quilting by Angela Walters that I won from Sewcalgal's free motion quilting challenge that I have been participating in.  There are many great FMQ ideas in this book and I can't wait to try some of them!  Thanks, Angela for your tutorial and for sending me the book!

I also won this wool and charm pack from Colleen - you can see her blog here.   I have some wool applique patterns that I will use the wool for - don't know yet what I will make with the charm pack.  Thanks so much, Colleen!

Thanks for visiting!  Now, back to digging out from under.