Flying Geese Quilt is done...

After nineteen years in the making, the flying geese are flown! I used a high loft poly batting and the backing is the 108" fabric from Joann's in blue paisley. The border on the two long sides is a white with navy tiny print and the binding is the reverse - a tiny white on dark navy. Those two fabrics were in my mother's fabric piles after she passed away, and I have had them as well as a few of her quilting cottons that were in smaller pieces. Some are in this quilt. So this is a work of tribute to my mother, who was a better quilter than I will ever be, but who didn't like the quilting part of it, whereas I love the free motion quilting. I have to say I liked applying the binding as well. It took many viewings of several videos on binding to get the full picture of appying the machine binding. I wanted to have it all by machine - no hand quilting here.  One place I have found great videos is The Missouri Quilt Company  website. Great stuff, and great gals there. There is a tutorial on the Flying Geese that is terrific. I didn't use it though because I had finished the top a long time ago - about five years or so ago. Watch the several links I am including on binding, and you can see the two ways of doing it - machine and hand, and then all machine. I love it all by machine. Wendy Butler Berns on Craftsy does it all by machine, and I love her classes. Her Machine Quilting class is terrific.

Next project up is a couple of warm jammie fabric quilts made from scraps and length of fabric left over from the several pair of knit and flannel jammies I have made my grandsons over the last 9 years or so. I have a lot left over, so this should be a design challenge as well as a major winter project for me. I start the cutting this week. It will be some sort of wide strip or wonky block quilt - I haven't decided on the design, but I can't follow patterns as I want to do it all myself from start to finish, and I am not good at measuring or at calculating and the thought of following a pattern meticulously makes my head throb, so I will be jotting up a few designs and getting on with it later in the week. So many people on the PatternReview site have been more than helpful to me in the quilting endeavor, and I have made some good friends in the quilting world.