Gypsy Trails: finished

Hi everyone.  Here is the finished quilt I gave you a sneak peek of on Wednesday: I managed to stitch on the binding and get some photos this morning (it poured with rain here yesterday).

The pattern is called Sunny Trails by Corey Yoder of Little Miss Shabby for Moda Bakeshop, and I used many fabrics from Amy Butler's line Gypsy Caravan, which had been in my stash for a long time, plus some extras to break up the sometimes rather same-y look which using just one collection can give.


The combination of Gypsy Caravan fabrics and Sunny Trails pattern is the reason for calling the quilt Gypsy Trails.  The blocks were fun and quick to make: as always the greatest pleasure, I find, lies in playing with the fabrics.


I pieced the top back in February 2013 and it has been in my pile (large pile) of unfinished tops.  I have done a lot of piecing this year (and previous years...) and I really need to address some of the backlog: as we all know - it's not a quilt until it's quilted.

Anyway I had a trip recently with my friend Sylvia to Eclectic Maker, a quilt shop in West Worthing, about an hour away.  I went with a shopping list and (for a change) stuck to it: I only bought backings and wadding, no impulse buys.



This was one of the backings and I love the fabric so much I bought enough for two quilts....  It is from Jen Kingwell's Gardenvale range and I think it is perfect with this top, notwithstanding the many years between the original fabric purchase and backing acquisition.  Binding is from stash, so that's another plus.





The quilt measures 48" x 72".
I made four extra blocks as I felt they completed the design (so that is 24 x 12" blocks).

I decided against borders, largely because I didn't have anything suitable in my stash at that time and I was trying to use what I had.

I went a bit mad with the quilting after the simple cross-hatching on the Liberty Oakshott Sixteen-patch.  I wanted to accentuate the white diamond 'frames' and to put something curvy in the squares, but I didn't want to FMQ.  

I hope you can see in the close up photos above that I used a curvy leaf shape which I was able to quilt using my walking foot.  It did involve turning the quilt quite a bit and burying thread tails afterwards but I am happy with the finished result: it's a great texture and I am off to soak the quilt now in cold water to get rid of any remaining traces of blue marker.  Hopefully a bit of shrinkage will further increase the crinkliness.

Linking to Amanda Jean of Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish it up Friday.