TGIFF - Calling me home

Well this is a helluva finish ladies and gentlemen... I started this just over 2 years ago and intended to have it finished February last year. But the best laid plans of mice and quilters... Without further ado, here is Calling Me Home by McKenna Ryan (by me).

Here's a closer look:

And the bottom:

It is a mammoth effort. The scissor handles on the initial cutting of pinetrees wore my little fingers to the bone. I started with the eagle block (below) and knew NOTHING about iron-on appliqué for landscape quilts.

I'm a lot wiser now...

All the little bits, including the flowers on the bear paw bloom, are individually cut and then ironed on and sewn down.

Imagine machining all those little shapes down! And then deciding in a blinding flash of genius (not) to outline them all to make them stand out. Yup, that's right. Call the men in white suits.

I spent a fair amount of time debating with my machine whether it would sew with the monofilament thread, or whether it would just eat it. Half the time it won. Half the time I did. I probably spent about 4 hours engaged in this debate though.

I don't know what I'd have done without the massive spools of Aurifil monofilament thread Mr Alex sent me... I used the clear for most of the quilting and the black for the water under the ducks and a few other dark places, like the bears.

The other thing that took a fair amount of time at the end was a jealous puppy. That kinda made the final quilting process run as follows:

• Sew for 2 minutes. 
• Chase puppy. 
• Retrieve scrap of fabric. 
• Distract puppy with toy. 
• Sew for 3 minutes. 
• Chase puppy. 
• Remove packaging from wonderclips from puppy's mouth. 
• Distract puppy with chew stick. 
• Sew for 90 seconds... etc. etc.

As the sun goes down on this project, I'm wondering which to finish next and TRYING to restrain myself from starting a new one!

I hope you've enjoyed my visual journey with this quilt. It's now time to link up... Please link back here or to TGIFF if you've