My April Finish
For my April unfinished quilt I chose a stack of blocks that I had sewn several years ago during work time at a quilt shop. Once the piecing was finished I moved on to other piecing projects that were easy to take back and forth with me each month and the blocks were all but forgotten.
When I was rummaging through my unfinished projects looking for something to work on in April, I was happy to find not only all the blocks required for the quilt top but also border fabric. In my stash drawer I had three other pieces from the fabric collection that I could use as binding. I did order some flannel for the backing and the quilting did require more tan thread than I possessed necessitating a quilt shop run just before closing time last weekend.
The swirly quilt pattern was a stencil I had purchased at PIQF last fall. I know stencils have fallen out of quilting favor but I like them. I like having my patterns be so very even and exact. It appeals to my picky nature. Unfortunately, after I had fallen in love with the pattern I found that my white chalk pounce did not show up very well. I tried several other marking tools and finally had to pull out the big guns. I marked the whole darn thing in fuchsia crayola washable marker. Yes, it did take forever. Then as I quilted and quilted and quilted, because that is one dense pattern, I fretted that the ink might not really all wash out. I had been too impatient to test the ink on all the fabrics – which I no longer had scraps of anyway.
Fortunately, luck was with me and I pulled the quilt out of the wash yesterday and all the very bright ink was gone leaving behind a lovely, crinkly quilt.
One more quilt finished. Now to start rummaging through the pile for my project for May.
- – marcella
