Week Three of The Year of the UFO

I finished another long overdue project this week. I pieced this Irish chain quilt in 1994 when my babies were 2 and 5...now they are both married, and my granddaughter is two! Weird how fast twenty years goes by...

You can see the plain, six inch border I chose to finish the quilt. When you wait 20 years to finish a top, you are actually LUCKY to have yards of the green set aside, but sadly, none of the white-on-white print (it's very subtle). I also opted to play with my machine a bit and make this one a learning experience. I try to learn something new on every project, or at least practice a rusty skill. So, I quilted with dark green Glide top and bottom (Totem Green & Christmastime), and used a double layered batting. I put cotton/bamboo on bottom, and topped it with 80/20 cotton-poly for loft.

I bought the digital "Hearts and Feathers" set to fit an Irish chain, and I really like it. I think I'll piece a couple of baby quilts later this spring and use this motif again. 

I had one single strip of checkerboard left over from 20 years ago when I had been working on a pieced border, and I hated to waste it, so I slipped it into the center of the backing fabric I chose (you can see it on the take up bar):

The "sharp star" on the checkerboard blocks was kind of a whim. I had quilted another gorgeous Irish chain last fall, and quilted a more elaborate block on the alternate blocks of it. But it had a plain back that really showed the quilting, and this one is more visible on the front...plus that hearts and feathers motif is busy enough. Here's a picture of the previous Irish chain:

The one thing both have in common is that I had to turn a block that was designed to go on point so that it fit a square in order to get a strong diagonal feel. I need to shop for digitized block designs that have an "X" vibe.

I had just enough backing fabric. I hate being that close. Fortunately I had plenty on the sides to turn it in my frame to quilt the other two borders. The border knots are a "wrought iron" design. Again, after the frills of feathers, I thought a place to rest was nice along that border, and it looked very Celtic to me.

And UFO2 of 2014 is completed. I also had a beautiful client quilt in and out of the frame this week, and I'm working on piecing the commission for Bahama Habitat (a raffle quilt) for the next week. Here's a sneak peek of the beautiful CQ1402: