On Ringo Lake(A Podunk Picnic) Finish

 Finishing a Quiltville Mystery is a major accomplishment in my quilting world.  I don't typically make quilts with so many little pieces.  Bonnie style of quilting is a little bit more classic/traditional than my style.  Every once in awhile it's good to get out of the comfort zone.

The challenge isn't just in the tiny pieces that are for the most part cut individually.  Choosing fabrics for a mystery can be challenging since I almost always change the colors.  Thank goodness she gives us a month to choose fabrics before the first clue is released.  It usually takes that long for me to commit to a color pallet.   My scrap bins are not over flowing with my pallet of choice.  So when I make a Bonnie quilt I'm cutting from scraps all the way up to yardage.

I'm not one of those quilters who counts how many prints or how many pieces are in a quilt but I can tell you there is A LOT of both in mine.  One of the good things about finally finishing this quilt is I can finally put all those larger pieces of fabric back in my stash cabinet.

Quilting this beauty went fairly quick since I chose to to almost 100% free motion.  My quilting plan was to keep the quilting fairly light.  I had an idea but the idea didn't work, so I just added a little more quilting until I was satisfied with the look of the quilting.  My plan was to only quilt in the white areas and the yellow sashing pieces.  In my mind it looked great but once on the quilt it left to much poof in the corners of the blocks.  Adding quilting to the yellow and green areas of each corner balanced out the quilting and pleased my picky eyes.  I also hadn't planned to do feathers in the border.  The plan was for straight line ruler work.  But feathers are quicker so feathers it is.  

The backing is pretty boring compared to the front of the quilt.   Just one happy little yellow heart for the label.  I've recently started adding the label to the backing before quilting the quilt.  This is a sure fire way to make sure the label is never removed.  It also seems to be faster than adding after quilting the quilt.  The white fabric on the back was also used for the binding.  I love how the white binding lets the quilt just fade off instead of having an abrupt ending frame.

The backing was two pieces of yardage I already had in the stash.  I was planning on a yellow floral but it was just too much yellow.  

My quilt labels for the last year or so have been simple white squares with a frame using scraps of fabric from the quilt.  This time I decided to get a little wild and crazy and make a cute little heart block.  I've also put together a quilt label making kit.  In my kit is everything I need to make the same size label for every quilt.  Anyone interested in how to make a quilt label kit?  

A Podunk Picnic is ready to be cuddled and loved.  I can't wait to put her on the guest bed later in the week.  So you'll probably see it at least one more time this week.  But for now it's time to just relax and enjoy the snow. Playtime, Let's make a Snowman!

Yes my friends I love snow.  It's so pretty.  Podunk in winter is brown.  Brown grass, brown trees, brown farm fields all around us.  BROWN with gray skies.  The pretty white snow brightens things up a bit and gives me and Mr. Podunk the opportunity to let our inner child come out to play.  Every year we try to make at least one snowman.  I make the bottom ball of snow and he makes he top two balls since they are too heavy for me to lift.  Dried up coneflowers for the eyes, dried gaillardia for the nose and a brick chip for the mouth.  Mr. Podunk made the arms and I added the accessories.  It was Mr. Podunk's idea to add the sign. 

The sign was a birthday gift from my best quilting buddy Bev.  I've been a quilter for 30+ years but this blog began in 2011.  Wow, it's hard to believe I've been chatting away about quilting for 10 yrs. 

My Word of the Year

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