June is for finishes

Hello, hello! I'm back in the blogging saddle and ready to share what I've been working on lately. Seems like I got into a mode where I've been batching things together. I sewed up a ton of blocks, then a bunch of tops, then a passel of backings, and a melange of binding strips. I quilted all the pieces one after the other and stacked them up. And this week I am finally, FINALLY! binding them.

At each stage, there was always an excuse to not take photos. "Eh, a pile of blocks isn't very interesting." "This flimsy is so wrinkled, I'll have to wait until we have enough power to run the iron before I take a pic." "Five backings pieced, three to go! Woo hoo, I'm on a roll! No time to stop now!" Or I took the photos, but they were so bad that there was no motivation to write a post featuring dark, blurry pics. It's been a wet, windy spring which makes taking photos outside a festival of quilts blowing around annoyingly. Overcast days mean the inside of the boat has been dark. Yada yada yada.

But as you can see from the top photo, we are in the calm, beautiful waters of the Erie Canal and I'm ready to share!



Today's finish is this lap quilt for a special young man. He is the older brother of my goddaughter, and you've never met a sweeter, smarter or more handsome guy. He's taking the exams to become a Professional Engineer and this quilt will be a gift to celebrate that major accomplishment.



The entire family loves to camp, and the quilt is made from really fun camping themed fabrics. I supplemented the camping fabrics with outdoorsy ones like denim, burlap, and plaid. Well, not REAL denim and burlap chunks, but quilting cottons that look just like them. The basic stitching is tons of light/dark HSTs and the setting is called Depression Blocks. I have no idea where the name came from, because I was quite jolly while making them.



This fabric with s'mores and blue enamel coffee pots is so fun! And yes, those are chicken feet in the red triangle. It was the right shade of red and I hope it brings a chuckle when it is discovered.



I quilted a couple of different motifs: a four-lobed shape in the small dark diamonds, wishbones in the dark larger diamonds, and stippling in all the light areas. All that fancy quilting almost invisible in the busy fabrics, though, so an overall design would have be fine.



The binding is a navy blue with gold stars. It goes nicely with some sprinkled starlight triangles. Seeing the beauty of the night sky is a huge part of the appeal of camping! Unlike the "climbing out of the freezing cold tent at 3am to go pee" part.



The back used up some coordinating fabrics that were either too fun to chop up, or had too much mixed light/dark values to work in the HSTs.



The text along the line of trailers says, "Are we there yet? Are we there yet?" So that what I named the quilt. Are We There Yet will be winging its way to California soon.

Quilt in the Wild bonus photo! You may remember the baby quilt called Butterfly Strands I made for friends. They sent me this sweet photo of their beautiful baby girl on the quilt, and it's just the best thing ever. I just love seeing quilts in use, don't you?

I have more finishes to share next week, so I'll see you again soon!