TGIFF is Here Today at the Wild Rose Cottage Celebration

Welcome to this week's landing spot for TGIFF!

It was a clever idea that Laura and M-R had to develop a weekly link-up where the hosting responsibilities are divvied up to lighten the load. And this week it's my turn! If you want to explore  further, here is its mother page: TGIFF.  

(Today's link-up is below my own finish report.)

I'm very excited to share with you a really terrific finish that I've been looking forward to for quite some time: Wild Rose Cottage.

79" x 79"

This quilt has been on my UFO list for a couple of years. It's my rendition of the 2010 Patchwork Party in the finishing kit from Suzanne's Quilt Shop. These are annual block parties (sometimes two per year) where 12 online shops each make a block from Marti Mitchell templates and one of her fabric collections, then each shop works up its individual finishing pattern. I love seeing the huge differences that come from the same 12 foundation blocks and same fabrics. You can check that effect out at the latest party - its Gallery is still up. 

Kathy's photo at Tamarack Shack

The sweet florals and breezy colors of this one snagged me, so I collected the blocks and kit to do up as a BOM. In fact, one of its blocks is the model for the BOMs Away button! 

I did tweak the medallion a bit. I wanted to go with applique instead of piecing, and I wanted to soften the overall effect. 

I also "tented" the fence posts instead of leaving them straight-topped. Boy, was that a task!  At least I embraced my affinity for modern approaches and did that as wonky as my heart desired. Kept things moving along much faster than if I'd tried to keep it all even. And it looks better this way.

Kathy's photo at Tamarack Shack

This is one of the quilts that I wanted to send out for longarming because of its large size, and because at the time that I placed it on a waiting list, I was still lacking confidence that my own FMQ skills would yield a happy result for me. I'm so glad Kathy took it on at Tamarack Shack!! 

She did the best quilting job, finding a really nice mid-line between decorative custom quilting and functional every-day scale (am I making sense?) This was to be a quilt that would be comfortable on a bed rather than close-quilted like a master show quilt. I love Kathy's style and knew she'd come up with some fantastic motifs.  Here is her blog post about doing the quilting on this: Wild Rose Cottage Quilt. She's let me use some of her shots in this write-up, as she got some great ones.

Kathy's photo

She  even put in the cutest dog on the front lawn for me. I'd asked if she could try that just to tickle my husband's fancy - which it does! (We don't have a dog, and he does love them).

Kathy's photo at Tamarack Shack

And I love the large studio tote that she sent the quilt home in:

So my fingers flew for several hours this morning to finish stitching the binding on this romantic gal in time to photo-op her before the afternoon thundershowers arrived. I was rather excited, because all our snow finally melted yesterday and things were actually dry enough to take her outside. 

And wouldn't you know!!  Just as I was looking around to see what other poses I could manage on my own, who comes driving around the corner but my very own super-cool Air Force Dude?!  My husband works such demanding hours at the clinic, that I am not exaggerating when I say this is probably only the third time since 1990 that he has been able to come home for lunch. 

And when I came running around the corner with Rose draped over my shoulders and the camera bouncing on my belly, he happily offered to hold her up for more shots. 

Isn't she a sweet quilt?!  Now I just need to get a hanging sleeve on her so we can put her up before she starts any bed duty. My usually rather blase 19yo got enthusiastic about this one and said "You need to hang that one up, Mom!" So I will. - -  I think I'll share her at a couple shows, too, before bed duty!

~*~*~