Finished, Finally

Today, I did the last of the free-motion quilting stitches on the Christmas quilt I've been working on. What a relief that is. There were whispers around the house that I may never finish that baby, but I am proud to say I can call it a done deal. Well, it's not quite finished, because it still needs blocking and binding, but for me that part is an easy last step. I will post a photo of the whole thing when the binding is on.

You get a sneak peek of the centre here, though, and a close up of the free motion quilting. The candy-cane medallion you see is cut from a panel, fused on and stitched around the edge with invisible zig-zag stitching, with some thread-painting added on the holly and ribbon.

I cut out a cardboard template to do the sashing strips, but much of it is just free-motion. Interestingly, I switched to a smaller needle, and this improved my tension issues tremendously. A lot of it is heavily stitched, and there is some distortion, so I will need to block it to hopefully straighten it up. In a rare instance of foresight, I prepared the binding strips, label, and hanging sleeve when I was assembling the top back in November, so it will be a quick matter to get those on.

With this Christmas quilt off my machine table, I can now move on to other projects that I had set aside. I'll post about those when they come up. And with this new enthusiasm for free motion quilting, I took a look today through my WIP box, and there are a number of completed quilt tops.  And yes, some of them have been there for a while. I am thinking I now have the confidence to get to work on them and get them converted from tops to finished quilts. Imagine that!