September Finish for A Lovely Year of Finishes

Doing the happy dance here...I met my goal for September!!  This is a "Treasure" quilt challenge for my longarm guild - Inland Northwest Machine Quilters.  We paid $50 to be in this challenge and two ladies went to garage sales, estate sales, and thrift shops to find quilt tops.  All the tops were put in paper bags and numbered...then the fun began!  They pulled names out of a basket and we got to come up and take an envelope that contained the number of the bag containing our "treasure".  Some were in better shape then others and no two were alike!  Mine is a single Irish chain probably hand pieced back in the 60s.  So many of the seams were coming apart that I ended up taking the whole quilt apart and putting it back together.  I did change the layout of the colors a little, just because I wanted to.  I quilted in using traditional patterns that the quilter who started it might have used. 

Original quilt

I really didn't like the random placement of the lavenders.

This is an example of the holes and the 1/16th to 1/8th inch seam allowance

I knew that no matter how much hand sewing I did to repair the holes, the quilt just would not have stood up to being washed and being such a light colored quilt it needs to be able to be washed frequently!!

Now I have a quilt that I really like!!

With feathers in the border and a heart wreath in the centers of the "white" areas, along with some continuous curves in the colored squares, it has great texture and I'm loving it!  I chose the hearts to represent the piece of our heart that quilters put into every quilt they make.

I am linking up with the finish party at Sew BitterSweet Designs.

A Break from Quilting

I won this totally cool wood burning tool set from Cindy at DIY Beautify and it came with this beautiful cutting board!  So I just had to try it out!!!  My step-son is getting married in October and there just happens to be a wedding shower for the beautiful bride tomorrow...so I had to try out the wood burning on the cutting board as a gift for them.  She just happens to love to cook and bake, so giving her gifts is easy.

The wood burning set came with the alphabet so the letters weren't too hard - just hard to figure out how hot the tip was and how long I needed to leave it on the board.  I am definitely better at quilting then wood burning, but this isn't too awful for a first try.  I hope they will use it often during their long and happy marriage!

Thank you so much, Cindy - I love the wood burning set!!!

A Lovely Year of Finishes - September 2015 Goal

I am joining with Sew BitterSweet Designs again this month and declaring my goal of getting this lovely Irish chain quilted and bound!!

So, do I quilt it with white thread or be bold and use pink thread in the white areas???