I am so excited to share that I have finally finished my Murmuration quilt! The pattern is by Rebecca@Bryan House Quilts. I  first saw Rebecca’s Murmuration quilt in 2019, and I fell HARD for her gorgeous quilt especially because I am such a big fan of the color turquoise. I knew right away that I wanted to make own Murmuration quilt using similar colors as Rebecca but with some subtle differences. She used a little more blue in her quilt, and I wanted to use more teal and dark green. I initially planned to make it in 2020, but I didn’t have the time or mental space to do so. Ditto for 2021. But I FINALLY made it a priority to clear time on my quilting schedule for 2022.

I started working on units for this improv, paper-pieced project in May, and it took me about seven weeks to make the 93 diamonds and 30 triangles using these 21 Kona solids: Prussian, Celestial, Everglade, Glacier, Emerald, Ultra Marine, Caribbean, Pacific, Oasis, Cyan, Turquoise, Lagoon, Jade Green, Breakers, Pool, Capri, Azure, Aloha, Aqua, and Sea Glass. To add interest, I varied the color arrangements and number of strips and widths of strips in the diamonds. The finished quilt measured 62″ x 72″. 

I found the perfect backing fabric at backside fabrics called Soar Moody Blues which depicts a nature scene in teal.

I decided to have Rebecca at Rebecca Grace Quilting quilt this for me because she’s done such amazing quilting for me. Rebecca operates her long-arm quilting business differently than other long-armers. When someone wants her to quilt a project, she gets basic info about the quilt, puts together an estimate of costs, and enters it into her quilting schedule. When I contacted her in May, she put Murmuration on her quilting schedule for Aug 20-22nd even though I hadn’t started working on it yet! Having committed to a specific time frame really helps keep me focused!

The other reason I like to have Rebecca quilt some of my most important projects is that she is a great communicator which should not come as a surprise to her blog followers. She really considers what quilting would most complement the piecing and makes extremely helpful suggestions, sending images of quilting patterns that she believes will enhance the quilt. For Murmuration, we chose a quilting pattern called Contour Cocoon. Below is a pic that Rebecca took before she sent the quilt back to me (I absolutely love the sign that looks like it made of metal with the sewing machine and the name of her business):

I finished up the quilt top the end of July and Rebecca finished the quilting on Aug 19th. I got it back from Rebecca on August 25th, trimmed it on the 26th, and machine sewed the binding (Kona Celestial) on today—August 27th. You may be able to tell that I’ve quite excited to get it on my bed! I haven’t had time to make a wall hanging quilt to hang behind my bed so I bought this trio of blue ocean canvases (which may need to be hung a little lower) on Amazon.

On the wall to the right of my bed a sliver of a painting is visible. It is extremely sentimental to me. My parents bought this watercolor painting (probably in 1980s) that looks like a photograph from an artist named James Burr. It is of a windmill in Mykonos, Greece. I decided it deserves it’s own full-on photo:

Linking up to Kathleen McMusing: TGIFF and Meadow Mist Designs: Favorite Finish Monthly Linkup–August 2022.