TGIFF LinkUp - Finish Report - Daisies in the snow!!

Hello!  Welcome to this week's Thank Goodness It's Finished Friday hosting!

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Binding was stitched yesterday for my second 2019 UFO finish: "Gems in the Daisies"

(I am linking up on Tish's UFO Busting post)

This is a fun 60x60 quilt top that I pieced in 2013, after buying all the fabrics to make the sample I'd seen in our Florida local quilt shop in 2010. I remember being enchanted by the jewel tones, that daisy print border, and the "gems" in the pineapple block piecing.

Wait! Are we really mid-spring?!

It wasn't on my Top 12 UFO list for this year, but it was the quilt that Uncle Don chose when I asked him to choose one of my tops that he'd like to have. I'm finding this to be a very effective motivator to finishing the 40-something quilt tops in my closet - just choose a relative/friend and ask them which one they would like!

Quilter's Dream 70/30 batting after one washing.

I tried out Quilter's Dream 70/30 batting for this one. Pros: full body for a thin batting, which shows the quilting a little better than a single layer of 80/20. Cons: less softness than 80/20 or cotton, doesn't crinkly quite as much if that's what you want, not as lofty as a single layer of wool, lots of poly content. It's not really 70/30. It's actually 60/40. So it was quite staticky in our dry climate, and this quilt will not breathe as well as cotton, wool, or even 80/20 quilts. I don't think I'll use it again in a functional quilt, but it would be great for a single-layer batting wall quilt or table topper.

I'm not sure why it was so difficult for me to choose a quilting scheme for this one, but I found something that played up the daisies theme and brought some good organic curviness into the very angular piecing. 

Rulers continue to become easier for me to handle. I was able to branch the curliques off the curved framing directly from the ruler mid-arc, so that I didnt' have to double-trace the main arc line to put in the curliques on a second pass. 

Some daisies in the yellow "gems", and some figure-8 fill work in the quilted arcs - first time I've been happy with it - 

And ribbon-candy stop-border work - 

Some metallic thread play in the blue and purple "gems", which sparkles *far* more in real life - 

A little bit of lacing arches at the printed "trim" in the borders- 

And some freehand e2e daisies along the flower border - 

I had some great purple batik in my stash to use for the border yesterday. Fortunately, it was all attached about 10 minutes before we lost power. I sure missed my Netflix movie session while stitching the back side down, but the storm raging around us provided a fair bit of distraction. Sometimes good, sometimes nervous-making (like when something big hit the roof, and when we heard a huge thud outside). White-out conditions made it hard to see much of anything past about 20 feet around the windows, and by 6pm, you couldn't see outside, anyway, because of the caking on the house:

So, wow!! Yeah!! Yesterday was a **day** here! I mean, can you believe all that snow we got in the photo op above?

We got more than snow. We got a full-on "snowicane." (Or, technically, Bomb Cyclone.) This passed right over us yesterday, with winds over 90mph. That snow was perfectly horizontal, and the drifts it created in our area are serious.

Having lived along the Florida coast for 20 years, I've been through 3 direct hurricane hits and 2 side-hits, so I knew a little of what to expect. It's not as super scary to hear the sounds the house makes when it happens during broad daylight instead of night time. But the cold temperature makes it more dangerous for the people who don't know to stay the heck in their houses. The power went out at brunch time, just as the heart of the storm hit, but I was completely amazed that they got it back on only 4 hours later. I was certain they wouldn't even start trying to fix it until the storm's backside would arrive, around 6-8pm. I'm sure all the people with electric-only heating in their homes were most appreciative! 

So many cars were stranded, that our region looks like a zombie movie set.

All the roads in the area were completely shut down, and we still can't get to Denver from here. I-25, 83, and 105 are all closed. Yesterday, a lot of people were stuck on the Interstate in cars with blown-out windows. 

None of our house's windows were broken, but we lost a beautiful double-trunk Ponderosa at the bottom of the property. This 4-5 story tree is down across the neighborhood road, and since it's only a tertiary road for the plows, county services won't start working on it for quite a while. At least the neighborhood has exit points from either direction.

This wind tracing image from yesterday is really cool. You can see why Interstates were completely shut down all across Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas. . . 

I kept thinking about the Children's Blizzard of 1888, when so many Plains school children died in the conditions. Thankfully, now we have much better weather forecasts and cell phones to call for help!

For most people, the work day was a total washout. For a quilter, it was a perfect storm day to snuggle under a quilt while stitching its binding.

~*~*~

But how about you? Have you finished a quilt, or quilt top, or complicated set of blocks recently? We'd love to see your accomplishment!  

Link up a post or IG photo below and look around a bit to help your fellow quilters celebrate a finished quilt or stage!  :)

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