A pretty finish

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Eight-inch squares full of rainbow joy alongside some batik jelly roll scraps and Kaffe Fassett magic make for one happy quilter!

Last night I completed the hand quilting on this beauty. I had already bound it and after trimming the strings on the back, I tossed it in the washer this morning, then into the dryer and voila! Another finish of a quilt I would LOVE to keep, but it has an awesome home already in place.

This happens often; I'll sew up something that truly strikes my very own fancy, yet with the full awareness it won't remain in my possession. Yeah, I could design something similar, but it wouldn't be the very same, in that many of the skinny pieces were scrap and I used them all, ha ha! Also those exact solids aren't part of my stash, but boy I was pleased working with them. And of course the backing fabrics can't be replicated easily, neither can the binding, and, and, and....

The fish are courtesy of Violet Craft's Fisherman's Bend collection and the small squares are Kona Berry.

And I don't get to keep every quilt! Oh my goodness, what chaos would ensue if I did, LOLOL! Yet just as satisfying is making them, especially when hand quilting provides even more time to admire the gorgeous prints. And what joy is reciprocated when they are gifted, which fills my heart with stitching euphoria. Scraps from this quilt have already been incorporated into a few Cornflower Quilt blocks, allowing me to possess this rainbow magic on a manageable scale.

Such is the pleasure of sewing with the right hand, then giving away with the left. And now our sofa is less cluttered, freeing my evenings for more English paper piecing while a machine-sewn quilt top in progress requires my afternoon attention so it can go into the finish column. Kind of a never-ending marvelous cycle of quilting karma. Not that I'm making tremendous strides in winnowing my fabric stash, but maybe by year's end there will be a definite reduction, hah! Time will certainly tell....

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