The Season for Geese

 

It is such a satisfying feeling to finish a quilt!  You might have noticed that it's not something I do every other week so it's cause for celebration!  Yesterday, I finished the polka dotted flying geese quilt I started a few months ago.  

This quilt resulted from a serindipitous moment in my studio.  Some years ago, I bought a bundle of fat quarters of polka dotted fabric at a quilt show, just because I love dots and they looked so luscious, all bundled together.  Like candy!  I kept the bundle on my shelf where I could see it, because it just made me so  happy to look at it.  And about 3 years ago, when I went to the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham, England, I discovered Oak Shott cottons -- gorgeous shot-cotton fabric made in the UK.  I bought a small bundle of them too, a rainbow assortment.  And I had that on a different shelf in my sewing room.  

So a few months back, I was pulling fabrics for a project and happened to grab the polka dots off of the shelf in order to get a book behind them.  I did the same with the shot cottons.  So there they were, next to each other on my table, looking like they were meant to go together.  After a flurry of triangle cutting, here we are.

 

I did a lot of doodling to figure out how to machine quilt this.  I wanted to knock back the spaces between the geese, so you can see I landed on some straight line quilting.  And it turned out that the geese triangles were too bumpy without any internal quilting so I did an internal triangle in each one.  Once I block this it'll be nice and flat.  (So I suppose it's not TOTALLY done.  Blocking and the label.  Still, I'm calling it done.)  

There are big multicolored polka dots on the back, and I was happy that my local favorite quilt shop had Kaffe Fassett shot cotton in just the persimmon color I wanted for the binding.  

Now, on to the next project!