Across the Sea... finished!

On Friday I finally finished my Across the Sea quilt!

I started this quilt last summer as part of the Across the Sea quiltalong hosted by Ellison Lane Quilts and Fairy Face Designs. I decided to use a fat quarter stack of Loulouthi that I bought at my LYS, which also sells some fabric. As the background, I used a pale gray solid from Connecting Threads. That was a mistake--not because of the fabric itself, but because Connecting Threads frequently discontinues colors, and by the time I realized I didn't have enough gray, they'd discontinued it. :( Fortunately, someone from the quilting group on Ravelry was able to help me out and sent me a small piece that was just enough to finish the top!

Once I finished the top, back in March or so, I decided to back the quilt in an aqua solid and the large floral pattern from the Loulouthi line. It took a total of 3 yards--2 yards of solid, and 2 yards of the floral, both cut vertically and sewn together.

I quilted it using a doodly flower design that I found on Oh, Fransson! I started out following the design as written, which called for 6-petal flowers, but after taking a break from it for a month or so and going back to it, I accidentally started doing 5-petal flowers and decided that I liked those much better. They're easier to do and look better, in my opinion--and that's what I doodle when I'm bored! I used gray 100% cotton thread from Connecting Threads--a very good deal, and thread that I enjoyed using and will use again. I do wish that I could adjust the tension so that I could have used different colors on top and bottom--I had aqua thread that I wanted to use on the bottom, but when I tested it there was showthrough, and I didn't like it, so I just used gray on top and bottom.

(Ignore the blue marks, I hadn't washed it yet when I took the pictures!)

I found a sale fabric on Connecting Threads that matched the aqua backing fabric just about perfectly, and I used that for binding.

 

Look how nice that binding looks! I've finally figured out how to make machine-sewn binding look nice--sew it onto the back first, then use binding clips (not pins) to clip it to the front, then move the needle so that it's as far to the left as possible and sew it on with a matching thread. I used aqua thread to attach the binding on both top and bottom. I have been having difficulty attaching the two ends of the binding, and there's a little wrinkle where I ended up with just a little bit of extra binding and didn't feel like unpicking and resewing.

Unlike pretty much all of the quilts I've made in the past year and a half... this one is for me!! :-D and it's sitting on my recliner right now. I absolutely LOVE how it turned out and I'm thrilled to have it done!

Linking up to:

 

Also, finished the Christmas quilt late last night, and there will be pictures of that a little later!