May Finishes, Can I pick a favorite?

To recap, I have been busy.

But first, I am linking up with Yvonne @Quilting Jetgirl for Favorite May Finish. Head on over to see bloggers favorite finish for the month of May. Click here for those posts.

I am going to call this scrappy quilt done. Sorry, it is raining all week without a good up to date photo op. I just finished the binding, yay. This quilt and the center 9 patches were from a retreat I went to for vintage machines. All these were signed by the ladies who made the blocks. Additional information is where they were from and what make and model year machine they were stitched on. Those vintage machines have flawless stitch! I made each of those 9 patches into stars. Each of these quilters were superstars! The surrounding outer border is from my orphan 9 patches as well as great use of my 2 1/2 inch square bin. I will treasure the time I spent with these ladies at TOGA (treadle on gathering academy) and I will treasure this quilt for the rest of my life. A true keepsake!

This top was finished last weekend, it’s ready for quilting. And this too is made from scraps from one of my free designs, but more of a controlled scrappy. I need to shop my stash for a suitable backing.

And this rail fence I finished this weekend. Sometimes all the projects I have going get to a completion stage all at the same time. I love when that happens. This is a 3 yd quilt. Apologies, this is a quilt top now but I failed to snap a photo. It is now offsite at the longarm. Next inline to be quilted.

I have quilted a quilt for mom. This is called Walk About. Mom used a marriage of beautiful fabrics!

And this quilt had a bit of drama at the finish line. Long story short, Mom received a large assortment of fabric, notions, batting from a quilter who passed. In that assortment was this marbled burgundy wide back. I did not measure the wide back but assumed it was a tad less than 120 x 120 due to prewashing. I always load my backings with the selvage edge on my red snappers. Because I had so much extra hangover on the sides, I still assumed this was the standard wide back size. Neither Mom nor I measured. And that made a fool out of me! The wide back was only 90 wide and had been washed, so a good 4 to 5 inches of shrinkage. I ran out of backing! I have been doing this for a while now and feel horrible for my goof. So, I was using a pantograph, I advanced the quilt, locked down the machine head to resume and keep the pantograph inline and poor Mom had a bunch of hand stitching a strip of fabric in a very hot and humid garage to do. Irrelevant to that goof, this quilt turned out beautiful! That quilt will tell this story one day, but for now its secret is perfectly stitched silent. Oh and Because my batting is only 90 wide I had to frankenbat at the very end in a couple spots.

I am looking forward to getting back to the free quilt along which makes this quilt.

If any of you are interested, all the free block templates you can find them here. I am going to keep this free so visit when you can, but in case something happens to all this technology, you may want to download and print.

In summary, my favorite finish this month is the patriotic quilt! This screams picnic to me!

In Summary it has been another bumper crop of cotton this May! And thank you for reading my blog!