Snow day finish

It seems like my life has been full of a lot of unexpected things recently, including the snow storm that happened on the East coast this week.  It was wild! Heavy, wet spring snow that made the roads an absolute mess.  For a while there it was really hard to see outside.  We got hit on Wednesday, and the people to the north had to suffer through Thursday as well.  And of course everything was closed.  And we all know what that means, right?  Bonus sewing time!

I didn't think I'd have a finish this week, but I settled in and finished this little lovely:

If you recall, this is a little string top that I made a couple of months ago.  I made the blocks at the end of last year from the smallest of my strings.  The 16 little blocks were just destined for a box but they became this little top instead. While it was snowing, we were lucky enough to still have power (some people didn't) so I sat down and quilted this up.

The quilting for this little top went pretty quickly.  I used a walking foot to make a simple crosshatch through the string blocks, and then to outline the small inner border.  Then I used some chalk to draw in some scallops on edges of the inner border and echoed those twice to make a nice frame.  You can see it a lot better on the backing:

Well, I hope you can see that. After I finished it up, I had to add in that glass button in the center, you know, just to give it some color. All together, the quilting for this piece only took about an hour and a half, including drawing in the scallops.  I used the walking foot for the whole thing, which was awesome.  I think I could do a lot with this, and it makes me want to at least look at the book by Jacquie Gering on machine quilting with a walking foot.  It's so much easier for me than free-motion.  And it turned out great!

At about 24 inches square, this quilt is obviously wall-hanging size, and it happens that we just bought ourselves a lovely sideboard for some extra storage.  It's on a wall that spans the kitchen and dining room, which is all open.  I hung the quilt right above the sideboard, where it certainly shines:

The picture here doesn't do it justice because of the indoor lighting, but it looks really good against the blue-green wall.  I especially like how snappy that green binding looks.  It adds a nice happy spot to the kitchen, kind of like a stained glass window. I used Command strips to hang this directly on the wall.

So there's what I did on my snow day!  It was actually quite relaxing since I had no where else I could be and nothing else I should have been doing.  Oh, sure, I could have looked harder, but why?

Hope everyone has a good weekend.  Believe it or not, I'm going to be. . .cooking.  I know! But I really have no choice but to learn some new things in the kitchen.  I've been having some health problems for a little while now, and a couple of weeks ago I was (finally!) diagnosed with an autoimmune disease which is going to require me to eat gluten-free, sugar-free, and dairy-free.  If you know any recipes which are not also taste-free, I'd love to hear them!

Sharing at Finished or Not Friday, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, and crazymomquilts.