Joy comes in the morning

Hi everyone, and happy Friday!  I do love Fridays.  When our kids were small, it didn't really matter that it was Friday because the work was unending, you know?  But now I really, truly appreciate weekends.  It's one of those good things about getting old (ish).

This week I finished a little piece with free-pieced letters:

Joy!  I know that most people advocate trying your own name first, but my name is made up of stupid, pointy letters that just do not look good together.  Really!  Not that I didn't try it, but I do have to work on it to make it look better.  More on that later. . .

So I made "joy" for a couple of reasons, mainly because they seemed like easy letters (how do you get easier than "o"?), but also because it's a fun word.  You can't be unhappy when you make a little "joy" quilt.

To make this, I raided the giant jar o' strings:

I should do something about emptying that, huh?

Then I made the letters, which takes longer than you think. I was going to leave it just as a word and then combine it with some other words, but it looked so happy that I decided to finish it as a little quilt all its own.  I pulled out the strings again and just added them to the word panel, log cabin style.  I did this quilt-as-you-go style, which means that I layered the name panel with some backing and batting, then added the strings right on top of the batting, then pressed like it was a normal thing or something.

Of course, I had to stipple the name panel after that, and I really stink at stippling.  I know, I should practice more.  I do like how it makes the letters pop, though, so I should really do it more often.  The binding is leftovers from the Serendipity quilt.  I stripped off the gray side of the binding and just used the 1-3/4 inch yellow.  Its a single fold binding, but it worked great, and it used up that wonky scrap of binding.

This was my second foray into free piecing and I'm surprised about how much I enjoyed it. It does make a mess, though:

Hope everyone has a great weekend.  We are finally going to see our grandson!  I feel like I could fly there without a plane, I'm so excited!  Talk about joy!

Sharing at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Finish it up Friday and Oh Scrap!