The cat is already out of the bag that I finished my Summer Sampler 2017 quilt top because I posted about it on Instagram over a week ago, but now I get to write a little more about it. I honestly was shooting for finishing it mid February, but somehow all the planets were aligned and no seams needed ripping, and getting this quilt top done came together fairly easily, but I certainly logged a fair amount of hours doing so. All other activities of life took a back seat! I’m sure some of you can relate to that tunnel vision.

My Jan ‘18 One Monthly Goal was to complete the following filler blocks/units for this quilt top: 15 more small sawtooth stars, 23 more narrow flying geese units, 20 diagonal flying geese units, and 184 half-square triangles for the HST border. Well, obviously I got them done, but here’s a photo mosaic that shows each of those blocks/units. I love how precise the paper-pieced flying geese are because normally my flying geese are not this orderly!

I only made one change to this well-written pattern and that was to make my half-square triangles 8-at-a-time rather than the 2-at-a-time as suggested. There were just too many HSTS not to use a more efficient method of making them!

As I was finishing this quilt top, it became more and more clear to me that the large proportion of Kona Coal as the background fabric had a flatter look that it does with the individual blocks and units. Just yesterday I read a post by Jean Wells on Auditioning Colors in the Design Process, and she clearly explains how proportion of color can affect our projects. I talked to Michael at ThreadBear who is going to do the longarm quilting, and we hope that using a lighter grey thread with a small-scale meander will give this background fabric more texture and interest.

My Kona Berry binding is all ready to go. I am so excited to get this quilt totally finished!

Linking up to Elm Street Quilts: Jan ‘17 OMG Finishes and My Quilt Infatuation: Needle and Thread Thursday.