TGIFF is Here Today! Let's celebrate some finishes!

Greetings from Colorado, USA. Welcome to this week's TGIFF link-up!

Have you finished something lately that you'd like to share? 
Link up at the bottom of this post, and be sure to visit some of the other links 
to find great eye candy and help your fellow bloggers celebrate. :D

I am sharing "Night Watch"  - an item from my Q1 FinishAlong list

After soaking and blocking it to dry, it finished at 14-5/8 x 40-3/4 inches

My husband has a few minis that I've given him over the years for his office, but this past year the man has been angling for more quilts to take in. He even came to me asking where a particular quilt was, saying he had meant to steal it but couldn't find it. When I said it was too large, he replied, "Oh, I'll find a way to put it up!" That told me just how seriously he wanted more quilts. So I thought I'd let him choose something he particularly liked.

The row quilts designed by Marie Noah at Northern Threads really caught his eye, and he requested six of them. He even gave me a list of the order he would like them in, and I committed to making one each month for him. 

used a double needle on the curves in the yellow parts

As you can see, I wanted to do some fancy quilting on the block portion, and do some background quilting that spans the width behind all those trees.  - - - The prospect of all those start/stops between the forward elements was not happiness. So I fused and quilted in layers, as shared in this past post. 

For the most part, that approach worked really well, and I'll definitely use it on the other 5 kits. I just wish I'd remembered that I had wanted to pre-position and chalk trace the wolf so I could leave the quilting out of his main area. You can see the background lines indented inside his form. Scott probably won't even notice - it shows more in these photos than it does in real life.

Fusing and quilting in layers does make for a messier-than-normal back, so if you're doing this on a quilt that won't be stuck up on a wall, I'd use a backing fabric that will camoflage the quilting instead of highlighting it like this leftever "stuff" from wedding sewing two years ago. I have no idea what its fiber content it, but it worked, and I have enough for all six quilts. Good way to use it up and cut costs here.

I did a wee bit of trapunto on "Night Watch." The main batting is a scrap of Hobbs Heirloom 80/20 cotton/poly. I backed the moon and the center circle quilted into the feature block with an added layer of thin poly batting. I didn't pre-stitch those down, as I'd recently seen another blogger share that she just uses glue sticks to hold the pieces where they need to be. This technique worked great on my simple shapes and saved time.

I love the extra loft this gave the center of the block. I was going for a fractured-moon effect radiating outward when I did this part of the quilt. The outer yellow arcs do not have trapunto. That's just the effect of the open versus micro-meandered portions. And this was the first time I've free-motion quilted with a double needle, which I used to make the circle and arc in the yellow parts.

I really enjoyed making this little quilt. I actually did all of its work at my domestic machine, and I used Aurifil 50wt thread on everything.

I had three reasons: First, the longarm frame is commandeered by challenge UFOs, OMG projects, and the ocassional customer quilt. Second, I don't have confidence in my skills at the level of ultra-fine control needed to stitch down the meticulously cut edges of fused pieces. Third, I welcome the opportunity to keep my free-motion quilting skills at the domestice machine. Longarm work is NOTHING like domestic works - they are separate skills outside of the artistry, and I don't want to lose the one because I've picked up the other.

(I am linking this at Muv's Free Motion Mavericks, because my FMQ skills are important to me,
and the 2018 Finish-A-Long Q1 Reports at Sandra's.)

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Now it's your turn!!