a finished Whisper

Well look at that - a brand new week!  I hope you had a lovely weekend and feel ready to start fresh today!  Yesterday our family had a glorious adventure on the river, thanks to some friends who lent us a canoe.  So much nature and giggling and sunshine - it was pretty idealistic except for that part where our frantic up-stream paddling brought the canoe so close to the river's edge that a branch knocked Brandon right into the water.  Oops...

Never mind that.. hey, I have a finish!  The little bits of sewing snatched here and there are all that was needed to finish this 27" x 30" baby quilt.  I dogwood quilted inside each 3" patchwork square, and was pleasantly surprised to find my Juki does NOT need servicing.

Remember all the skipped stitches that almost did me in when trying to free motion quilt Lolly Lolly?  Well, this time I used a new thread, oiled the machine and was not quilting over fusible web.  (I think it was the fusible web that was throwing off my machine before.  I've heard that from others who made the same style quilt.)  Whatever made the difference, I'll take it.  Yay for pleasurable quilting!

So, here's the back.  I'm pretty jazzed with how it came together, because those trip around the world blocks were actually how I started this project.  The 2" patchwork felt too small for my tastes with these fabrics, but looks nice floating in a sea of white and Florence Four Dot.

That block hiccup is what pushed me to make this project work, actually.  I felt like moving on when the trip around the world blocks didn't turn out like I'd hoped, but I felt compelled to make a quilt front to go with them.  Block abandonment is a slippery slope.

(And I already have some of those in need of rescue at the moment.  Shhhhhhh....)

Bound in Herringbone by Joel Dewberry, with my zigzag machine binding as always.  It's the only way I bind.

I've set up this wee baby quilt for sale in my Etsy shop, because you never know - maybe it will find a home.  This weekend I gave away two quilts, which makes me feel much better overall.  I wish it was so simple as giving away all my quilts, or selling all my quilts or donating all my quilts to charity.  So far, I don't have a rule of thumb and I really don't know how I decide.  Occasionally that leads to confusion and angst.  Maybe someday I'll have a system!