Shop Hop Quilt Finished

Here's the finished quilt, washed and out of the drier...in all of it's wrinkly goodness.

For most of the blocks, I used the walking foot and did echo quilting, or variations there-of.

I used 2 different brands of multi-color thread for the quilting: Guterman for the purple & blue, Wonder-fil for the pink and green.  I like them equally well.  Only thread issues I had was some breakage with the Aurofill that I was using to join the blocks.  I wonder if it's b/c my thread feeds vertical to the machine instead of horizontal like most new machines.

I did some free-motion machine quilting on some of the blocks.  This is the first ever that I've done on my machine.  I'm intrigued that fill patterns that I love to do on a long-arm, were really hard for me on my machine and vice-versa.  (A glass of Merlot did improve the roundness of my loops. )

I've used a couple different quilt as you go techniqes, but this one was new to me.  The background is cut larger than the block.

Then folded and pinned out of the way on the back of the block.

Block trimmed to size (in this case 13").

Then the backing is folded back out and trimmed 1 inch from the block all the way around.  The backing then becomes the sashing.

Two blocks are sewn wrong-sides-together, then the 1" seam allowance is folded under and topstitched for 1/2" on each side.

I have mixed feelings about this approach.  I managed to slice into the background piece of one of the blocks and had to do a clever save.  It was also difficult to keep the stitching line close to the batting.  But it is faster than the technique I usually use, which involves machine stitching the fronts together and hand stitching the back.

In the end, this is not my favorite quilt ever, but I did get to try some new techniques, and most importantly...it's off the "WIP" list and onto the "Finished Projects"!!!!