Smoky Mountain Honeymoon

Okay, finally some pics. Quilt is all done except for the label. I know, I know, you're supposed to put the label on and THEN quilt the quilt so that some theif somewhere can't pick the label off. What can I say? I'm lazy? I have a lot going on? I just don't care? Probably it's all three.

As soon as I make the label and get her new mailing address this quilt will be winging it's way to sunny FL to my very dear, childhood friend Kelli who married in May. She has always loved sunflowers and said she's doing her house in sunflower colors, only darker. I came up with my own interpretation of that color scheme and ran with it.

Using civil war repros and more luck than ability I pieced log cabin quilt blocks and set them in the straight furrows pattern. I used red in the centers as a little nod to tradition and put a thin inner border of the same red print around the log cabins. Then a border of HSTs--I LOVE HSTs! and finally a very thin green outter border from the same fabric as the binding. The binding is doubled fold, continous biased binding so the little red stripe in the green fabric runs diagonally which is really cool.

Again, more dumb luck, my backing fabric of little chickens was not wide enough. I had just enough strips leftover from the log cabin blocks to make a 6" wide (finished) strip of strips, chinese coins style in the middle of the backing. It made it just wide enough and I love the way it looks! I machine quilted it in a random all over meandering stipple, which is so fast and fun.

I washed it when it was all done to shrink the Warm and Natural all cotton batting I use. It shinks up to 3% on its first washing which is not enough to cause problems to the quilt but enough to give it a slightly puckered antique look. It measures 45" wide by 53.5" long (figure that one out.)

As Serendipity would have it, my friend and her new hubby honeymooned in North Carolina, in a cabin in the Smoky Mountains. So I have named it Smoky Mountain Honeymoon. I LOVE this quilt. If it weren't intended as a gift I would DEFINITELY be keeping it!!