Road to Oz

The road to Oz is a bit wobbly, and it took this quilter forever to get there. My mom's quilt is finished, washed and in her possession, and I am happy to report she loves it!

Here it is, thanks to Leland for holding it up for me in the wind this afternoon, and it seems that Penny always makes an appearance when I take photos of my quilts. :) She was a bit hot this afternoon, it got into the 80s today, too hot for the Malamute in her.

As I mentioned in previous posts, my inspiration came from Megan at Lucy & Norman who was inspired by this quilt. I love the way it turned out! My only wish is that I could have finished it sooner than the day before Mother's Day so that I could admire it a bit (this always seems to happen!)

For the quilting I didn't want to do my typical stippling, it wouldn't have looked right with the pattern. I did a bit of browsing on the internet and came across this FABULOUS website full of ideas for free motion quilting. I decided to do a brick pattern for the quilting, which was very fast and work perfectly for the quilt. Since the bricks on the quilt are wonky, my lines could be too. It was really fun to quilt, and my stitches were even for the most part. Here is somewhat of a close up of the brick quilting on the back. It is the best photo I took in the wind, that shows it off.

I have decided to post what I learned from each quilt once I have finished them. Maybe I can help others out that are learning like myself, or maybe they are silly common sense things that someone could prevent me from doing again. :)
What I learned: when doing a wonky cut block, start out with a larger fabric than you originally planned. For my blocks I started with 4.5" by 7" wanting a 4 by 6.5" finish, wonky. I should have started bigger, it would have saved me a lot of headache and time. But this was my first time working with wonky pieces, without a pattern too. I also could have cut my white strips larger to go on just two sides of the block, rather than cutting small ones (1") for all four sides. These were silly things that took up too much time to work out.