Roll forward to the beginning of this year and I found the tutorial by Leah Day for joining QAYG blocks with narrow sashing - a little light bulb popped on and since then I have moved this project from barely-touched-since-leaving-the-class, to finished quilt which I love.
The fabrics are a bit of a mixture but most of the heart/flower fabrics are from a Benartex range called Sweethearts. The layers were all joined together with some really poor (hindsight is a wonderful thing) hand quilting - I did it like I did embroidery, so the front is fine but the back not so great.
Speaking of the back... the plan was a chequerboard effect. Oh well!
This is a wall hanging - there is too much hand sewing for it to be a snuggly quilt, so I've popped a couple of hanging triangles on the back.
And this quilt even has a quilt label - mostly because there was one little bit where the sashing didn't catch the edge of the fabric - 3 years of floating around cupboard had led to quite a lot of fraying. The label nicely hides this little miss.
And what am I going to do with this quilt now - I'm going to hang it in the nursery of course, because Thursday's scan showed that we are (very likely) expecting a little girl!
This is one of my favourite ever finishes: It represents so much of my quilt journey and the learning curve I've been on for the last 3 years. I love the fabrics and it is getting finished at the perfect time in my life.
Just a final few notes (mostly for my benefit for the next time I use this technique for sashing) of what I learnt: I would cut the sashing strip for the back a quarter inch wider than Leah suggests - although the size she gives is the accurate size needed, it does depend on a very accurate quarter inch seam, and when I'm stitching through so many layers, I struggle to get it perfect. To keep things even it works better with a walking foot (which I find makes the quarter inch seam even harder to maintain). Turning down the speed of the machine was a big help too. I would also recommend reverse stitching at each end of each length of sashing - this is a weak spot when flipping it over and hand stitching. Also, removing the pins was important - I lost two machine needles in the space of ten minutes!
This was one of my Finish Along Goals this quarter, so I'm linking up with Leanne!