My Apologies and the Quincy Crazy Quilters' Raffle Quilt

Five Months! Wow, five months since my last post.  Its not that I don't have quilts to show you, its just that my life has gotten away from me.

Dennis and I started a health challenge in January and by June/July, we'd both lost over 35 pounds each and were avidly riding our bicycles, including attending some events on Lopez and San Juan Islands, as well as participating in the Tour de Lavender here in Sequim. Then we took a trip to Caldwell, ID, to adopt a female Border Collie, because you can't have just two dogs it seems. Of course, this girl has epilepsy, so managing that has been challenging. We also took a trip to Las Vegas recently to pick up a 13' Casita travel trailer and then drove home via California and visited with grand kids, including baby Ethan who was only a week old at that point. Oh, and we purchased a "tiny home" that was supposed to be delivered complete and "move-in" ready (no, we have no plans to live in it). The tiny home company went bankrupt and we barely got our bare-bones structure out of there. Consequently, many summer days were spent at our Lake Crescent property painting siding. Dennis is still our there three-four days a week working on it. He's loving that, so its all good. Hopefully, I'll find some pics and post a bit more about our summer adventures.

Through all this I have been quilting, but I am so far behind.  Today's pics will be of one of my favorite quilts that I just finished.  Its the raffle quilt for Quincy Crazy Quilters.

Isn't it pretty?  Its a Kim Diehl pattern and I just love how country it looks.  It was sent to me with the instruction to "fancy it up." However, I really didn't want to make it fancy with my quilting, I wanted to make the piecing and colors stand out.

First, the border.  I did a pattern that was a combo of some others that I'd seen. It was easy to mark, using the checkerboards in the inner sashing, but it still took three passes to complete. I do love how it turned out though.

For the star blocks, I improvised an Angela Walters design, and because I didn't want the thread to tell the story, there were lots of thread changes for each block. I did "fancy up" the cream background a bit with feathers in the star corners.  Below are a few shots.

I decided to do circles in the cream checkerboard squares, leaving the colored squares to puff up a bit.

And last, but not least, a couple shots of the back.

Thanks for your patience! I hope these pics made it worth the wait a little bit.

Dory