Ta-da! Finished Quilt!

I'm done!! It's not even Halloween yet! It's not even October yet!! It's not even the middle of September -- WOO HOO!! Finally, I finished a quilt early enough that I can enjoy it through out the holiday season it was originally intended for. A new world record for me.

OK, I know it is a simple pattern. Aunt Polly blogged about it here. There is a quilt shop nearby that has an AccuQuilt Studio Cutter than you can pay to use by the hour. It's $25 an hour, so I cut my fabric into 7 1/2 inch strips, pressed them and had them all neatly stacked up. I showed up, had them cut with the 6 1/2 inch tumbler die in less than 10 minutes and it cost me all of $5! Think of all the time it saved me -- no cutting all those angles just right, and it even trims off the corners so you don't have little tags sticking out. Then it is a cinch to sew them all up, my top was done in just a few hours of sewing. First I lined them all up in the order I wanted them, sewed the rows together, pressing the seams of each row in alternating directions, so when I sewed the rows together the seams all butted up against each other and made perfect little intersections.

Look at this glow-in-the-dark orange back! Ok, it doesn't really glow in the dark, it is a sheet (would sheets this color give you nightmares?). I was going to put a cute back on it, but then I decided I had enough scraps leftover to make a table runner, and I decided that I really didn't want to piece the back...so I went and got this sheet that would be an awful color for anything else but a Halloween Quilt!

I have been FMQing since about January, and this is finally some stippling that I'm not embarrassed to show you...click on the picture to enlarge. My old sewing machine just couldn't do FMQing, so after I got my new machine I really got

to work and made so many little practice sandwiches, I think I could have carpeted my home with them - except I wouldn't have ever wanted anyone to see most of them! I have learned to make freehand feathers and all kinds of little fun things. I think machine quilting is my favorite part of the quilting process.