Party At My House, Y'All! C'Mon and Link Up your TGIFF Finishes!

Hello and HAPPY FRIDAY, everyone!  If you've come looking for the Thank Goodness It's FINISHED Friday Linky Party, welcome -- you're in the right place.  I'm delighted to be hosting this week's finish party.  

I'm so excited to share my finish this week.  I know I say this a lot, but I found another new favorite edge-to-edge quilting design that I am crushing on this week: 

37 x 37 HST Baby Quilt with Echo Bubble Meander E2E

This 37" x 37" quilt top was pieced by a fellow member of the Charlotte Quilters' Guild for our Outreach Committee, and it will be donated to one of the NICUs at our local hospitals.  When I was first given this top for quilting, I considered custom quilting it with individual motifs in each of the white triangle units.  However, once I had the quilt top in my studio and was thinking about where this quilt was headed and it's job of comforting and encouraging a tiny, fragile baby and his worried parents, custom quilting just seemed too formal and too stiff -- literally too stiff, potentially, if it was heavily custom quilting, but too rigid psychologically as well.  I wanted this quilt to be soft and cuddly, playful and fun.   And then I found this Echo Bubble Meander E2E (Edge-to-Edge) quilting design by Joyce Lundrigan of Methodist Hill Quilt Studio, and knew it would be perfect to bring positive energy and love to the family who receives it.

In Which the Ghost of Claude Monet Wrests Artistic Control of My Kaleidoscope Quilt and Turns It Into Giverny

Oh-Ma-Goodness; It's MARCH Already!  I'll save you the suspense and tell you right up front: Finishing all 63 blocks for my son's high school graduation quilt is my one-and-only monthly goal for March.  By which I mean, finishing the octagonal centers of all 63 blocks is my goal -- I'll be deciding on the corner triangles once all of the octagons are completed and arranged to my liking on my design wall.  

Nine 11 Inch Kaleidoscope Blocks Completed

Behold, 9 of the 63 block centers are completed and up on my design wall.  That's one row down, and six more rows to go.  I'm planning to make three blocks from each fabric, so there will be much greater variety in the finished quilt than what you see on my wall right now.

The First Four Blocks

Keeping my time constraints in mind, I'm trying not to be TOO neurotic about the center points matching absolutely perfectly.  Meaning that I'm taking care to match them as perfectly as I can the first time, but have resisted the urge to grab my seam ripper over minuscule misalignment that you can only see from 2" away with your high-power reading glasses.

Preeti's Picket Star Quilt: Courage Like a Flower

“Deep in their roots all flowers keep the light.”              

– Theodore Roethke

Serendipity E2E Quilting Design on Preeti's Picket Star Quilt

One of the hardest things about quilting for clients is when you're working on a quilt that you are totally in LOVE with, but you can't share any pictures until after your client has a chance to share her own finished quilt on social media.  It is like having a giant box of Godiva truffles sitting on your desk, with a fan set up behind them to blow delicious chocolate aromas in your face all day, but if you eat them you will explode.  It's been AGONY, having these photos on my phone for a whole month without sharing any of them!  And now, without further ado, check out this gorgeous quilt made by my friend Preeti of Sew Preeti Quilts!

Ample Negative Space is a Perfect Backdrop for Large Scale Floral Design

“There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”                 – Anais Nin

And yet, waiting to share the pictures was only one factor contributing to the exquisite agony of quilting for Preeti.  She sent me this photo of the finished flimsy before mailing it to me, but then was adamant about NOT wanting to know how I was going to quilt it until it was finished.  I know, right?!!  Oh my gosh!