It’s voting day today in the US. I hope you have all gone out and made your voice heard. I try to remember, nobody is going to be the perfect candidate/solution. Let’s just try to move things toward a more equal, kinder, healthier country. I thought I’d post my finished quilt today for a bit of non-partisan happy.

I told you about starting the quilt here. So much of moving forward on this quilt has been about giving myself permission to not strive for perfection. It is so freeing. I didn’t worry about getting all the points to match up, the back (inside) seams are a mess, and I hand-quilted it. The stitches are all over the place, getting better and neater the more I did, so now they don’t match at all! Guess what- it is now finished and I will never notice. And I actually got it finished because I wasn’t making myself crazy about the details. Honestly, the hand-quilting was very relaxing. I spent an hour or a few most days until it was done, listening to audiobooks or podcasts. Nice.

Early on quilting stitches-

In case you are wondering- no I didn’t use any kind of frame. I draped the quilt (queen size) over a plastic-topped folding table- 24″ x 48″. The weight of the quilt kept things taut. The plastic top made it relatively easy to move it around as I worked. Also I could stitch down to the plastic and not worry about scratching something nice.

This pic is before I put on the binding.

The whole thing! Thanks husband and son and neighbors’ porch!

After I got the edge binding on, I put it through the washing machine. That is where this project hit a snag. The quilt came out all fuzzy (bearding I believe it is called). The quilt is all wool and the batting is also wool. The wool batting fibers migrated up through the wool fabrics. I used a clothing brush on it, back and front, and came away with a basketball size pile of wool fluff. The quilt looks fine although it is still a bit fuzzy.

On the bed-

And here is the back since I know you want to see-