Meadow Quilt - a finished quilt

It's been a while since I made such a large quilt and what I love about this project is that it simply evolved and I never imagined it would be this big.  I got the fabric, which is largely Meadow by Beth Studley by Makower, about six weeks ago and initially made the six large blocks which shoulder the log cabin blocks.  I then decided to practise log cabin in different shapes (hexagon and diamonds) and started to put these together with sashing.  Then I decided that I needed to add some length with scraps and friendship stars, which are always trusted favourites.  I thought that would be the quilt front completed but then I attended a class on making cathedral windows so as I had enough fabric left in the red and grey daisy chain I felt this would be a good opportunity to practise this more difficult block.  This quilt seems to document my own learning in the past couple of months.

I had forgotten how difficult it can be to quilt a large quilt on my humble machine so I was relieved when the quilting was done.  I approached the quilting in a similar way to the sewing and piecing.  It was only when the walking foot was on and the quilt was there that I decided what I would quilt.  This quilt has ended up being an exercise in quilting different shapes.  I've quilted hexagons, triangles, squares, diamonds and stars.  After my recent courses in free motion embroidery I wanted to quilt curves and circles around the cathedral windows, but I bottled it because I just didn't feel practised and confident enough.  The triangles I quilted around the curves do look good, however, so I don't feel too disappointed with ducking out from the more skilful technique on this occasion.

I love setting out to finish a project by a particular date and then succeeding.  My intention was to have this finished by Friday and I have managed that.  It's my mother's birthday shortly so this will be her gift.  It will look lovely in her house, so for once I am also meeting birthday gift deadlines as well.  She's been waiting for a quilt for a while now but I think it has been worth the wait because this shows more intricacy than I have perhaps done otherwise.