Dragonflies

I started this quilt about a year and a half ago to use in the sunroom.  It was just going to be a cheapie quilt to learn some new techniques on.  I used cottons I found at Lens Mills in Woodstock and I used cheap polyester batting.  I have a metal dragonfly on the wall and one of my fabrics has dragonflies in it, hence the name.  I found a dragonfly template that you pat with chalk to give you an outline to follow.  Sounds great in theory but it brushes off as you are sewing so it is hard to follow. 

  

 So some of the quilt was quilted with dragonflies and the rest was a sampler for learning free-motion quilting.

The quilt began as a lap blanket but I added another row and then I added a border and then I added another border... you see where this is going.  It now fits over my queen bed.  The blues are for the pool and one of the blue fabrics has fish on it.  The oranges and yellows are for sunny days which matches the sunroom theme perfectly.  And of course I can't have anything orange without thinking of Steve so that's a good thing too.  He had a duvet cover very similar to that backing.

I hadn't touched this project since the fall semester began.  I pulled it out the other day to continue working on it and was pleasantly surprised to see that all of the quilting had been done except for the borders.  It didn't take long to finish up after all.  I did spend about 8 hours hand sewing the binding and threading in all the tails.  Can I just say that self-threading needles are the best invention ever?!

All in all this quilt turned out way better than my expectations when I started.  And that's a good thing.