Alamo quilt is finished!

Well the Alamo quilt is finished and it is going on the auction block today.  I can't wait to see how much it goes for.  It was made by Linda and her daughters for a local charity auction with the proceeds going to St. Jude's Children's Hospital.

 I quilted it with a layer of cotton batting and a full layer of Dream wool on top of the cotton. Honestly, I probably won't do that again, the full layer of wool made the quilt nice and puffy, but it was wont to pucker.  I had to fight it to make it smooth.  In future, I will use half a layer of wool as that adds the puffiness, but isn't so thick.

 I quilted this on my Bernina 153, an older model that is my workhorse.  The Powerquilter was being repaired after I overtightened the tension knob.

Here is the quilt after it was blocked.  To block it, I put it in the washer on rinse and spin - I know scary!!  But I needed to rinse off the pounce and blue line marker.  Then I pinned it to my design wall (wet) and stretched it using a tape measure to make it square, pinning as I stretched.  I put a fan on it and let it blow overnight.  The next morning I unpinned it and it was flat and square.   

On those black triangles, I couldn't decide on feathers or curved cross-hatching (I mean, I really lost sleep over this decision), so finally I did both!  It is quilted with a variegated thread to really show up.  And I love the cobblestones... I used a technique from this tutorial: The inbox Jaunt

I also used a version of the bricks to make the rounded rocks on the Alamo.

I did make that lasso around the boot; I drew it freehand and did some rope quilting on the lasso. 

 And then I used my new ruler Linda Mae's rays to make the spiral rays.  This same ruler made the straight rays on the Alamo.  I love this ruler.  I had to use it for marking, but I have a ruler foot on order for my Powerquilter that will allow me to use this ruler like a longarm quilter would.  Hopefully....

Here is a photo of the barb wire fence along the border using a stencil that I have had forever and never used.  It was tricky, lots of backtracking, but I love the look.  

Here I am on the left with my shortie friend Linda (just kidding Linda :)

I think she was very pleased, especially since I bound it for her too.  

I hope you get to do some quilting this weekend.  Remember, 

"A day patched with quilting seldom unravels."  Karen