First finish of July

If you are in the US, I hope you had a great 4th of July celebration. We had our celebration over the weekend with a visit from one of my brothers, SIL, niece and Mom. SIL needed some dresses hemmed and she was duly impressed with the efficiency of the serger coverstitch. She said she calls that stitch the "store bought stitch"! LOL! 

She had texted me a couple of weeks ago to ask how to set up her machine to hem dresses and I suggested that she just bring them to me. I'm glad I did because they were all knit and really needed the serger. It only took about an hour to do 5 dresses and that included changing thread twice and machine settings twice.

The rest of the weekend I worked on quilting this quilt. This is one that Mom made that I started quilting months ago. I started quilting the stars and then got hung up on the background. It was in time out for a few months, I think.

I had decided that I wanted to do some sort of floral motif in the background and sashing and that's why I too Bethanne Nemesch's Blooming Botanicals class. It was an outstanding class and I learned a lot and I even quilted some flowers. But I also learned that I don't really like quilting floral motifs. I like ruler work, feathers and fillers.

I decided that I wanted to get this one done before we leave for Maine and set a deadline of next week to get it finished. That would leave me time to get the Goldfinch done before we leave too. 

I work really well with deadlines.
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After several days of chaling out ideas I finally decided to return to my roots of ruler work and feather motifs. This design allowed me to do the quilting in continuous rows. It also isn't too dense so, hopefully, the quilt will not be too heavy for my niece. We didn't know it was going to her until she saw it this weekend and loved it. Mom is thrilled.
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The pattern has a nice secondary design. The quilting isn't perfect but no one will look too closely.
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The backing fabric matches better than what shows in this photo. It's a backing fabric that I bought for another quilt and decided that I wanted something lighter. It had been hanging in the closet for a long time and I'm glad Mom liked it for this quilt.

I've also finished a crochet blanket and started a new one. I'll have those to share tomorrow.