Sunday Strings is finished!

Sunday Strings, my second quilt based on designs from the book Sunday Morning Quilts, is done. I was worried I wouldn't get to take pictured of it in time for Finish it Friday, but after raining for 2 days straight the sun came out on the most beautiful afternoon!  After sorting my scraps a couple weeks ago I sorted out the strings for this top. It is a lowered volume quilt, but not quite low volume.  For someone who is drawn to bold colors it's hard to scrape together enough scraps for a real low volume quilt!

This is my first top to completely free motion quilt.  I used the flower design that you can see on Cheryl's quilt "Sunday Morning" in the book.  I think it looks like Chrysanthemums.  I'm glad I chose such a small quilt to do this on because it took a surprisingly long time to do such dense quilting.  The final texture was worth it, of course.  I wish you could feel how soft and krinkly this baby is.

I had a large piece of this blue/pink/brown fabric that I'd been saving for the perfect occasion and I knew this was it.  I pieced together some pink scraps to make it large enough for the backing and attached one of my usual twill tape labels under the binding.  The binding I used was scrappy remnants of same of the same fabrics that are in the top and back.

My standard twill tape label, written with Sharpie Stained markers

Amanda Jean's pattern for this quilt is called "Candy Coated." I followed her directions loosely but made a smaller size.  The biggest change I made to her design was adding white fabric to the end of the pieced strips to make them all the same length, rather than trimming them to length.  I wound up with 10 strips, ranging in height from 3" to 10.5".  This has at least made a dent, if only a small one, in my strings containers.

Delicious texture and skinny strings

This quilt set a new record for most-densely-quilted-quilt I've ever done.  I knew that the additional quilting would mean more krinkle and therefor more shrinkage in the dryer, but I was still amazed by the extent of the shrinking.  Before it's inaugural wash/dry it measured 48.5" x 62.5".  After it was 45" x 57".

Snapped quick before it blew away! The wind was less than cooperative

I am trying to clear out some of the finished quilts that have been languishing around here in need of a home without adding any more.  This one will be winging its way to Michigan soon for Margaret's Hope Chest "A Mother's Hope" program.  They provide quilts to mother going through a treatment program for postpartum depression.  Carin asked for quilters to send a note to the mother, explaining why you chose the pattern and colors that you did.  In mine I talked about how this beautiful quilt was made from scraps that had been redeemed. Once cast-off; now treasured.  Redemption, that's one of the things I love best about scrap quilting.

A quick PSA: I just wanted to let you all know that the patterns for my quilts "Fly South" and "Little Peeks" are now available in .pdf format in my Etsy shop as well as the original twin-size Little Peeks quilt.

Parting shot, looking especially low volume

Linking up to Finish It Friday.