Ta Da, It's Finished!

Today is a momentous occasion. I have finished my snowflake shimmer quilt! This was part of a quilt a long that Yvonne Quilting Jet Girl ran just a little while ago. I kept up reasonably well at the time with the piecing but fell desperately at the quilting. I set myself all sorts of targets, first snow, family home at Christmas, more first snow. I missed all of them. No, I didn't, we didn't get any snow to speak of this year. I did unfortunately miss Yvonne's final link up but I will be like the little boy who comes in last in the sport's day running race. He gets so much applause, he is convinced he is a winner. He was a winner in my eyes anyway, every mother's son!

I really enjoyed the making of this quilt. I like the clean lines of Yvonne's designs, and I especially find myself drawn more to solid fabrics these days. I think everything in the USA must be bigger as this twin bed quilt more or less fits our double bed. I don't really like a quilt to hang too far down the side of the bed, our room isn't big enough for all the excess bulk, so I am happy for the neater fit. It hasn't been washed yet, hopefully there won't be too much shrinkage. My washing machine gave up the ghost on Sunday, so no real rush to wash it!

I know I have told you all this before, I used a blue variegated quilting thread  to cross hatch the dark blue parts of the quilts. I used three spools, all  different shades from the blue family to further accentuate the variation.

The mid blue snowflakes, I straight line quilted with a variegated aurifil thread. I did two straight up and down, and two left to right. I love the effect of this. I wasn't quite so keen on the gazillion thread ends I had to bury. It seems to have taken me about two weeks, every evening to sew in these blasted ends, it certainly feels that way.

There is no snow to get my final photos. We intended taking the quilt to our local high ground Belfast Castle at Cavehill for photos. There are lovely gardens there, great trees to drape quilts over and of course the hill behind you and Belfast Lough below.  Unfortunately the lovely weather of the last few days is to break tomorrow, so our garden it is. I used all the fabrics from the front and also other fabrics from stash that seemed appropriate. There is a blue snowflake, a pale blue star, darker blue spot, mid blue spot and of course pale blue spot. There is a also a little bit of the rocket fabric Yvonne sent me once, seemed the perfect place to use it.

My husband joked we could use the nearly finished photos of last week, nobody would notice. Of course they would! Thankfully he seems to like this quilt, always a plus when it is to go on "the" bed. He even commented  I have a falling leaves quilt, and now a snowflake quilt, that creates an opening for the remaining two seasons!

Here's Ronald, the head, admiring my quilt. You can just see the binding there.

 

 I was originally going to go with my favourite spotted binding but changed my mind at the last. I went with plain binding in runs of the different solid fabrics I used.

This is my second finish for the FAL first quarter, 2017 link up. I did it! This post will link up with my link up blog in a day or two.

Some of you may be interested to know that the Cavehill is known locally as Napoleon's Nose, the long hill looks like Napoleon in profile. It is believed to be the inspiration for the Gulliver in the Land of the Lilliput by Dean Swift who was a rector just down the road. When we get our next sunny spell I will try to get some photos in the wild.

Helen x

linking up with Lorna at Sew Fresh Quilts, and her Lets be Social Link Up
also linking up with Finish Friday and Crazy Mom Quilts