Over The Moon

Isn't it exciting when you finish a quilt?!  The long hours have come to an end and if we are lucky, every single second, minute and hour was worth it.  Besides the thrill of the finish, there is always that moment of sadness.  Sad that it's over.  This doesn't happen with every quilt, but there are those projects that you have enjoyed so much you want to keep going!

'Over The Moon' was mine!  

OVER THE MOON
15" x 15 1/2"

The size had a lot to do with it, and of course, the hand quilting.  I found myself looking forward to the moment when I could sit and pick up where I left off.  Hurry eat dinner, take the dog for a walk...quilting time!!  

   
There is hardly a spot untouched with quilting!  Over kill?  Over done?  Over the top?  I'll say over the moon and leave it at that!



I love the big stitches!  The more the merrier!  In each circle I tried to do a different quilt design. Some needed more stitches and some needed very little.  That might be the only part where I held back.



The right side I kept it super simple.  Vertical stitches and nothing more.  I'll admit, I wanted to do circles everywhere, but somewhere deep down inside of me wouldn't allow it.



I don't know for sure if the quilting on the back is suppose to look exactly like the quilting on the front.  Mine sort of does.  I know just enough to go all in, not enough to know right from wrong! 

Sometimes I think if I take the time to learn something the proper way, it'll take all the fun out of it! I know!  That's totally lame and maybe even a cop out!  But some truth in it for me.



I guess there was room for more quilting after all!  After machine stitching the binding on, I couldn't help but continue the circles into the binding.  I was going to do just a little, but before I knew it...there was stitching everywhere!

My first plan for the binding was to do a wide binding.  It's something I have wanted to do, but hadn't had a project to try it on.  I thought this would be the perfect test piece for it until I realized the circles would be compromised in the process.  Another time perhaps!



Since my binding situation changed, I had to go with a pieced binding.  Remember when I said the circles were a test and I used a piece of scrap linen for the background?  Turns out I had just enough left over after the circles for three sides of binding.  The blue side is a piece left over from my backing.  

I'm loving the texture not just on the front, the back is so cool!  It shows exactly why I wanted to try hand quilting! 

What I learned is, trying new is good...using scraps is always good.  Even though you are testing a new technique or tutorial, it just may turn out better than you think and becomes a really good 'thing'.   



You can check out the tutorial for the Six Minute Circle, the starting point for this quilt.  There will be more in my future!



This will be the next hand quilting project.  My daughter made this panel, a dye discharge technique using thiox.  I don't know what it means, it's what she told me and I'll take her word for it!  And you can bet I'll try to restrain myself with over doing it with the quilting.  I'll try, but no promises!

LINKING:

TGIFF

Finished or Not Friday

Oh Scrap!