Finished!

I finished my entry "Sweet Sunshine" for the Robert Kaufman Quilt Quest 2008 "Anything Goes: Handbags and Miniatures" contest. It is a variation on my "November Nova" design except that the finished size is only 16.5 inches square and I did not use the gradation-of-a-single-color theme that I used in "Nova." The contest rules stated that you could only use Robert Kaufman fabrics, so I chose a variety of their 1930's reproductions, incl. ones from Darlene Zimmerman's designs.

I'd planned to scallop the binding around the ice cream cones, but when I tried to sew on the binding and follow the scallops, I discovered that any individual cone curvature was lost when I turned the binding over to the back and the binding simply looked like it was very poorly attached--lumpy, not scalloped. So aside from the corners, which curved nicely, the binding is straight on the sides.

It's heading off in the mail today. I'm happy with it, although I wish my quilting abilities were stronger! I have SUCH admiration for people who can look at a quilt and envision quilting motifs that will enhance the design! I really struggled with that as well as just the actual quilting of it. It was a good learning experience. I think in the future I will try to plan out the quilting designs on a more overall basis (maybe trace them out on a paper copy of the design/block) rather than piecemeal it section by section.

So, we'll see how it goes!