All finished!

It's a delayed finish, but I'm done with my Fall Pops quilt.  Back before I had a blog, I was reading a post by Kate that said she'd designed a quilt pattern and wanted a few people to try it out for her to see if it was written well.  Kate chose to do her's in bright colors and gave it the name jelly pops.  I agreed to try it out as a newer quilter (although I've been sewing off and on since I was 8).  But, since she'd done bright colors with white, I wanted to do something totally different so I chose a jelly roll of Cotton Blossoms from Bonnie and Camille.  When it arrived, I realized it was mostly the darker prints from the line and I'd missed out on the bright colors I love, but I decided it would be perfect for a fall through Christmas quilt for our living room and it did provide a stark contrast to the colors that Kate had chosen.

  This quilt was SUPER easy to construct.  Kate did a great job using the pre-cut to it's full advantage.  I paired my jelly roll with a khaki-colored solid (I really can't remember what brand/color name.  It's from JoAnn Fabrics though.)  When done, I took all of the scraps and sewed them together to make a pieced backing consisting of the khaki and scraps.  I remember I even layed this one out to baste, but I had trouble getting it to lay flat and I gave up and folded it up for another day.  And then you know what happened...the WIP basket swallowed it and turned it into a poor, pitiful unfinished object (UFO) just hanging out waiting to be loved again one day.

So, I got it back out and conquered it!  This was my first attempt using spray basting.  The quilt-blogging world has featured many hints, tips and tutorials on using it lately and I do hate getting down on hands and knees with all of those little safety pins, so I gave it a try.  It was much easier and I can see using this technique in the future.  Not having to stop while quilting (especially with all of the issues I had with quilting) to take out pins was really nice.  I do have a few little bumps where I didn't get the top or bottom all the way flat, but as a first attempt, I'm okay with that.

Fallen pine needles is about all the color we've got so far besides green.  Fall color is fleeting in Florida...thank you pine needles for letting me pretend.  :)

Then came the quilting, which if you follow along, you know gave me fits last week when I had trouble with my machine chewing up my thread and causing major breaking problems.  But, y'all came to my rescue with tips to try and good thoughts sent my way and I persevered!  It was my first FMQ project on my new machine (which is almost a year old now!!) and it came back to me easy enough.  Actually, it made me want to do more!  I used a looping meander on this quilt.

I chose the dark brown for the binding because I thought it would define the edges of the quilt well and it was a scrap I had, so I did a little stash busting at the same time.  I originally had planned on using more of the khaki, but I'm also using it for my Summer Sampler and I didn't want to run out (since I can't remember what it is...), plus I thought the dark brown added a little more oomph anyway.

So...it's in the wash with this bad boy and then I imagine I'll find Emma cuddled up in it on the couch.  She's claimed first dibs on it!

And since it's full of fall color, I'm entering it in Rachel's Celebrate Color contest!