Green Seven Sisters Quilt

Finally, I am able to say that this quilt is finished...and it only took me a few years to get it done. Everything has been sewn by hand - from the piecing to the binding and quilting. I love how it turned out! I did leave a small area around one corner unfinished. I have not stitched the binding down in that area because I still need to add the label and that won't happen until I finish the other six Seven Sisters quilts that I am making for me and my sisters. I have not decided which sister will get which quilt and I don't really want to add a blank label and write on it later. I quilted this quilt in an all-over Baptist fan design and I went row by row from the bottom to the top. I love it! It finished at 74" x 83".

I had a little bit of an oopsie moment when I was trimming this quilt to square it up and I found that when I quilted it, somehow I went a bit crooked and I didn't have enough fabric in the corner. After trimming I stitched a small piece to the corner and just continued the quilting pattern and it is not too noticeable on the finished quilt.

Upper left area is crooked

Closeup of crooked front

I have recently seen quilts that are being hand quilted and they have the bindings already attached and I had not thought about doing it that way. I guess it would really help to keep the edges straight or would it just cause more trouble by possibly having a big ripple at the end? I also found when I was straightening the edges of my quilt that I had to be very careful not to cut any quilting stitches that were too close to the edge. I don't really know what the most common method or 'correct' method is because I just jumped in and did it!

The Seven Sisters quilt that I will be hand quilting next is the yellow paisley. I love the fabric that I used for this quilt. I am not too sure which quilting design I will use but I will have to make my decision soon. My absolute favourite is Baptist fans so I just might be tempted to use it again. I plan to baste this quilt on my quilt frame sometime during this week - I hope I can make it work as I have not tried that yet.

Kathy from Kathy's Quilts wrote a blog post the other day about blogging and why she blogs and she has listed some great reasons. I so wish I had been blogging when I started this project so that I would have all of the documentation about when I started making these quilts and all of the little tidbits of information about piecing them, etc. It would be lovely to have a journal that included pictures and other information about the bigger picture of what else was occurring in my life while working on these very important quilts. I have scribbled notes here and there but there is nothing like just looking back on blog postings and seeing all of the details at hand. It is also fantastic for the recipients of each quilt to see the process and progress of their quilt being made. I am much better at documenting for 'show and tell' on my blog than I am for just writing in a notebook for me.

I am linking up at Kathy's Quilts 'Slow Sunday Stitching'. Why not head on over and check out the links to see other wonderful hand work.