I Have a Finish! Meet Hope!

I've been working diligently on Hope. Hope is the quilt I started during an all-day, live quilt-a-long with Gudrun Erla of GEDesigns. If you remember this project from the summer of 2020 (I think), I worked on it with my sister. We shared our progress with each other over the phone as she was sewing along at her own home.

Sometime last year I pin basted Hope. Then at the beginning of this year, I put her on my 2021 UFO Challenge & my PHD2021 lists. Her number didn't come up until finally for December at the UFO Challenge. In the meantime, I'd needed the basting pins for other quilt tops so I tried out some water-soluble thread from Wonderfil, I used it to thread baste Hope, using the longest stitch possible on my sewing machine and my walking foot. It wasn't easy. The thread broke several times along the way. I'm sure it was operator error but I did manage to get that part finished eventually.

Jump ahead to November 2021 and time to start quilting her up. After all, it is due December 14th at UFO Club. I'm happy to say that the thread basting worked beautifully!

All the triangles got a fun flower quilted on them. I used a variegated green on the predominantly green triangles and a pink-ish, coral thread on the pink/coral triangles. A variegated gray was used on the predominantly dark triangles and there was gray serpentine quilting in the dark sashing (?) strips and along the outer borders.

After squaring up the approximately 60" x 80" quilt and sewing the 300" of binding on, I spent the last few days sewing the binding down by hand. When completed, I crossed my fingers as I threw the quilt into the washing machine, hoping that the water-soluble thread would indeed be gone and the quilt would come out of the dryer still in tact and beautifully fluffy. Ta! Da! Hope is complete!

Here are a few close-ups.

A picture of the entire back. I had plenty of the fabric left over so I used wide swaths on the back. I believe it was from a line called Urban Pets. You will notice dogs & cats on the different fabrics. Along the outer edges I used some wonderful Bee fabric with positive thoughts. Bee Positive. Bee Kind. Bee Respectful. Bee-lieve in Yourself. Get it? I love this fabric!

And here are a few last parting shots of Hope.

I hope you enjoyed Hope's debut. I believe Hope will be gifted to a young lady that I know who helps take in foster dogs and has even been known to have a few jobs pooper-scooping yards for working families. Since this is a lap quilt, I hope she enjoys many happy hours snuggled under it while reading books and playing on her electronic devices.

Even though this isn't a scrap quilt, I'll be sharing with Angela & Rainbow Scrappy Challenge friends at So Scrappy. I know they'll be thrilled to see I've finally got a finish to share. Ha!

Have a great weekend, everyone!