Charleston County Lines

Today's little quilts are both made using the County Lines pattern. This is the second (and third) time I've used this pattern; it's fast and easy. Sewing both flimsies at the same time allowed for a lot of efficient chain piecing. 

This fall-themed quilt is called Anticipating Autumn. The fabrics feature leaves, pumpkins, apples, and gourds. The green fabric is a neat basketweave print from the lady who donated 15 pounds of fabric to me last month. I used a mottled cream sashing to keep it light.

The wind conveniently flipped a corner up to show the single piece backing. It's a tone on tone leaf motif in rusty orange. A brighter orange blender binding makes the little pumpkins pop. I think the colors look really nice with our boat's new paint color, "Moondust." Much more coordinating than that ratty blue line, which is worn out and ready for the trash. I have brand new navy blue lines that I'm rather overly excited about. The yellow thing is our power cord.

For the quilting, I did a variety of FMQ motifs in the squares and rectangles. With the busy fabrics, it was pretty much a waste of time! The quilting is almost complete invisible. So here's another photo of our neighbor's pretty little Down East boat. The teak brightwork (wood) on this boat is gorgeous, so I didn't use my clips to hold the quilt in place and almost lost it into the water. Yikes!

I did get in some good FMQ practice on Anticipating Autumn, so that's a fine thing. I also decided not to stitch in the ditch or quilt the sashing at all, just to see how that looks after washing. It was nice to let the harvest-y fabrics remind me that cooler weather is coming, since it's been so hot and humid here.

The second quilt is called Charleston Catch, and features fishing fabrics and mossy green sashing. There are fish, seagulls, fish, guys with fishing poles, more fish, and boats. 

Specifically, the fabric shows this type of center console fishing boat. These are very, very common in South Carolina, so I thought a local retired fisherman would get a kick out of using this on his or her lap. The binding fabric is a dark blue with little bubbles on it. Having learned my lesson on the last one about FMQ and busy fabrics, I just did a simple large stipple on this one.

Another one of our marina neighbors has a (very nice and expensive) center console, so I tossed the quilt over the gunwales for a photo. It's considered quite rude to climb aboard without permission, so this was as much as I wanted to touch their boat. Our boat is in the upper right corner of the pic, with four large, lurid orange ball fenders protecting it from bad drivers (we've been hit once already in this marina.)

Here's another shot on the center console, which is actually the tender (small, auxiliary boat) for "Tika Dika," the large sailboat behind it. 

If you'd like to purchase your own boat, here's the sales office. It's kind of a sales shed, but quite a nice shed. I used their advertising/sandwich board to display my quilt, and the southerly wind held it nicely in place. No flapping in the wind! I'll have to remember that for more photo shoots.

I have six little quilts in the washing machine right at this minute, and I'm eager to see how my various experiments in quilting and puckering have fared.