May Goal Update

My goal for this month was to finish the My Small World quilt top I finished piecing in January of 2017, more than sixteen months ago.

I started by pulling it out of the drawer - even the picture I posted with my original goal post was old.  After a good pressing, I got the quilt basted and sky quilted.

That was the easy part.  Next, I started quilted the buildings below, switching my thread color to match or coordinate with each block.  Sometimes I could do several blocks in one pass and sometimes I only did part of a block with one color before having to break.  I prefer to bury my threads as I go along.  It makes the quilting take a little longer, but then when I'm done, I'm done.  The pins you can see in this picture are reminders to come back and quilt that spot.

I also experimented with hand-quilting selected parts of the quilt.  I've only done this twice before and both times it was on very small wall hangings (my Moda Matchbox quilts here and here), so it was fun to do it on a larger scale.

I didn't really have a plan for my quilting - I just made it up as I went along.  That was the same philosophy I used when I was piecing this quilt and I find that getting anxious about what to do isn't worth it.  There are lots and lots of seams in this quilt, so my quilting veers off a lot, but I told myself that that just adds to the charm.  Once it's done, it always looks good!

I didn't finish the entire quilt, but considering I got this out of the drawer and 80% quilted, it's still a win in my book.  This is going to sit out on my design floor and will hopefully be finished soon!