Fancy Forest is Done

I am so happy to have finished this quilt with a few days to spare. It has been a challenge and sometimes frustrating but I am pleased with the results.

Quilt and backing

The pattern was well written  and step by step it was easy to follow.  The difficulties I had were not the fault of the pattern.  It is a pattern that requires attention to everything, cutting, stitching, drawing diagonal lines on squares for connector corners (otherwise know as flip triangles).

I learned a few lessons that I will use when I make a second baby quilt from this pattern. Yes, I will make the second quilt.

1. When I cut the pieces for the blocks I will have a scanned and printed page with the cutting sizes that I can fold so that I am only looking instructions for each fabric in the block as I am cutting it.

2. Before I start to sew it together, I will lay out all the pieces for a block on a small design board and be sure I have all the pieces and understand where they go.

3. I will keep my work area clutter free and cat free.

4. I will not multitask when I am making the blocks.

5. I will make sure that I will not be interrupted in the middle of a block.

6. I will not dye my eyebrows.

Every quilt has a story and part of this quilt's story is one of an almost disaster. When my daughter and her friend do their hair they sometimes dye my eyebrows. I was getting ready to quilt the quilt which was layered up and pin basted. There was a scrap of the background fabric pinned on the batting on the side of the quilt for testing my stitch length and thread colors and I was ready to start testing my thread colors  when I was called to the other room for my eyebrow dye. Without any thought at all about the dye I went back to my sewing room and sat down and stitched some thread test rows. I looked at my hands and I had dark dye on my fingers. I washed my hands and looked the quilt over and  didn't see anything except a little bit of dye on the edge of the batting. I thought I dodged that bullet until I had quilted several blocks when I found  dye on the owl. I looked for any other spots and only found one that would be covered by the binding. My daughter said that is part of the story (She also said "I can't believe you were sewing with dye on your eyebrows").

As I finished all the quilting I thought about how I would fix this. In the end I machine appliqued a leaf over the spot on the owl.









There was no part of this quilt that I didn't have something to re cut, re sew or fix in some way. However the length of the binding strips when sewed together was absolutely perfect. It came together at the end with the exact overlap needed to make the diagonal joining seam. How often does that happen?

Anyway, that's the story!