Another year older

There wasn't much to celebrate but there was wine!  And a delicious Italian dinner.

Back to the Sunflower Farm quilt!  I did rather messy knots for the eyes and whatever those things are called on top of those stick things.

Bzzzz...

I finished all the appliqué and checked it at least seven times.  If I find anything I didn't blanket stitch after I've quilted it I am going to scream!

I decided not to do the border suggested by the designer even though it is pretty.  I just wanted something simple.  I decided to sew it all on in rows rather than the traditional way of sewing borders.

Almost done...

Ta da!

Quilting next.  I couldn't work out which thread to use.  It's difficult when you have so many colours in a quilt but the beige one stood out the least so I went for that.

It didn't take me long to attach it to the frame.  

I chose a simple wavy line.

This is what it was supposed to look like but I had giant gaps in the quilting and I thought I'd messed up by making my pattern too large. But it turned out to be a fault of the computerised system and once I'd finished quilting the whole top with the missing lines I rolled the quilt back up and quilted it again.  It was a quick design and it hardly used any thread.  I think the prep needed for each row took more time than the actual quilting on this quilt.

I finished it!  Yeah!

I managed to sew through my laser light cord.  Very annoying but it made a pleasant change from sewing my finger! 

I've cut my binding and attaching that will be a job for another day.  It'll be good to do the hand sewing part at retreat in just over a week's time.  I had been considering taking the blocks to finish off the appliqué at retreat so I'm very happy that I'm much closer to the finish than that!