Sailors Take Delight {A finished Quilt}

I'm so excited!  I had a binding marathon and finished three quilts last night and I can't wait to show you!!  This is the first of the three.  This is also one of the items on my FAL Qtr 2 list so woot for that too!  This quilt has been a WIP since 2012??  I think.  All I know is that the blocks were pieced using a VERY wide seam, pre-my understanding of a quarter inch seam days...

It's made using half-square triangles which are then sewn into quarter-square triangles, finishes at 50" x 42 1/2", and is made up of various red and white tone fabrics which are leftovers from a gift quilt that has yet to be gifted.  All it needs is a binding (apparently that's where I loose steam...).

I'm calling this quilt Sailors Take Delight, after the common ditty:

Red Sky at Night,

Sailors Take Delight.

Red Sky at Morn,

Sailors Take Warn.

The backing is pieced using various strips and leftovers from my stash but includes some amazing bunny fabric called Ric Rac Rabbits by Andover Fabrics.  It's not available anymore which is too bad.  I would definitely add more to my stash.  They are so cute!

I actually quilted this one myself with some help from a fellow Local Quilt Guild member, Ellie.  She was so kind to have me over to her house one day for a lesson on long arm quilting using her machine!  She told me to bring some fabric to practice on and I said, "forget it! Go big or go home!!" and brought two quilts.  We quilted it row by row using a fun flowery petal shape.  Some of the lower rows have double petals too.  It was fun to learn and try and I really look forward to spending some more time with Ellie in the future for more lessons. (THANKS ELLIE! YOU'RE THE BEST!)

You can really see the quilting progression in the backing picture above.  Some of my first flowers are really quite sad but they do get progressively better as you move down the rows.  By the seventh row I had it down but alas, ran out of quilt.

This quilt does not have a designated home yet so I may end up keeping it.  If I do I think it would make a lovely picnic quilt!  Also can we just take a moment to appreciate those lupines in the background of this picture.  They are in full bloom here now!

The quilt is bound in a dark navy solid that I happened to have on hand for one of the quilts I finished last night.  I can't show you that one yet because it's a surprise.  Overall I'm happy with the final results and really proud that I quilted it myself on the long-arm, even though it's far from perfect.  I have been practicing my doodling with pen and paper and hope to translate some of that to fabric soon!

Many thanks to my dad, Mark, for holding the quilt for me in these shots.  I managed to harass him into it after our post-work run this afternoon.  He was a good sport and only complained slightly about his arms being tired, but just couldn't resist a few silly pictures.You can't quite tell from the photo below but he's grinning and giggling in this one being funny.  (THANKS DAD! And check out his cool new kicks!  We're ready to hit the ground running.....pun intended.)

Also I just want to throw out there that I'm 2 followers away from 200 on Instagram.  I think once I hit 200 we'll have to do a giveaway!  Stay tuned for details!  Thanks so much for visiting! See you soon!

Linking up with Finish It Up Friday and Crazy Mom Quilts

and

Linking up with Adrianne at One the Windy Side.