Luck Be a Pink Hat

This one has been a long time coming.  I had the top finished, and the back too, over a year and a half ago.  I managed to get it to the long armers shortly before or after Smilosaurus was born, I can't remember.  And it sat for nearly a year once I picked it up.  I simply had no motivation to get the binding on.  It's not like I dislike the quilt, I quite love the boldness of it all, I was simply lazy and didn't want to sew on a binding.

The motivation to finish it came because I entered it in the show over the weekend.  Nothing like a deadline to get your butt in gear!  So I found the perfect fabric, braved the bias cut, and got it done.

The center portion of the quilt is from a book called Strip Pieced Quilts by Maikke Baker.  I was at a retreat with some quilting friends in my Red Hat group, The Garnet Gals.  Yes, I know I am way too young for a red hat, but these great ladies welcomed me in and still share lots of life and quilt experience with me.  We decided to sew one afternoon and put this together from stash.  And we all liked it too much to donate it - bad us! - so we drew straws to see who got it. I won!

The borders were pieced from scraps, yet another black and white fabric, and more circles.  If you look closely in the bottom photo you will see that the purple we used had coloured circles scattered across the purple.  That's where the colour of my circles came from.

This is one of my favourite backs ever.  So simple, yet really bold.  My initial plan was to put the label in a circle in the green, but I couldn't print a small enough, yet still legible label for any kind of border on it. It still works.

It now seems that the girls can't keep their hands off any aspect of my hobby, er... obsession.  It was impossible to get a shot of this quilt without them in it.

I had this one professionally quilted by a local lady, Berny Sproule.  She used a purple thread in a swooping meander pattern to bring it all together.  

Now, don't get too googly-eyes staring at the photo!