Hi quilty friends!

I hope that your 2015 is off to a great start! I have a few quilty goals in mind for this year so I hope to add those to a blog post soon.

One goal is to participate in some mini quilt swaps on Instagram. I’m now signed up for 4 this year, and I’ll send the first one out later this week. There is a vibrant quilt community on Instagram, and you can find me there as nwquiltedcat.

The other day as I was driving home from work, some late afternoon sun beams hit Mt. Hood with a striking intensity. The volcano seemed to glow, and I pulled over to take a picture (along with several other people!). Unfortunately, I just had a little point-and-shoot, and the pictures don’t do the scene justice.

I’ve been participating in Bonnie Hunter’s latest mystery called Grand Illusion. She released the final clue last week so I have been working on putting my top together. I went with a smaller quilt center and just a solid aqua border rather than a thin inner yellow border and pieced outer border. I used some of my leftover pieces on the back.

Here’s the quilt flimsy:

For the backing, I used units that would have gone into the pieced border along with some darker turquoise fabric that I had on hand. While trying to lay it out on the floor, someone jumped on the fabric!

After piecing the back, I framed it up on my HQ16 and just quilted an all-over meandering pattern with white Aurifil thread:

My Grand Illusion quilt (small version) is now quilted. I need to square it up and bind it. What do you think for binding – aqua or black or something else?

You can view other finished Grand Illusion quilts at Bonnie’s link up party here.

Enjoy!
~Jennifer