The Fourth Finish

Do you ever sit at your computer at the beginning of the week and think, "What happened to last week"?  We had guild meeting on Tuesday and I spent a chunk of Tuesday morning rewriting the instructions for the November BOM block. I decided the instructions weren't very clear, so more diagrams were needed.  I've not heard from anyone, so I'm hoping that means the instructions were OK. Late night sewing was canceled for various reasons, so no big evening of productivity.  Progress was made, but it still feels like an off week.   

The big accomplishment was completing the binding on my fourth finish for the year.  

Squared Away was started in 2018 as a Rainbow Scrap Challenge BOM hosted by Mari at the Academic Quilter and Angela at Soscrappy.  The blocks were finished that November, but sat in a project box waiting for me to decide what color sashing to use to set them together.  Finally in 2024, I decided that black would work and finished the quilt top before the end of that year.  It sat in the "to be quilted" closet till My Girl asked if there were any quilts she could gift as graduation gifts to her best college buddies.  This one is going to one of her undergrad buddies for Christmas this year.  

It's hard to see from the big photo, but the outside border is black with a silver curly design with lots of little colored dots, it works really well with all the blocks.  The quilting was done at one of our local quilt shops. The quilting thread is silver and the curly stitching works well with that outside border.  

The binding is the same fabric from the border.  This picture shows the printed design much better.  

The backing is an extra wide black and white paisley.  It works really well with the colorful front.  

Squared Away is my fourth quilt finish for 2026, the second one that was quilted professionally, but by someone different than the last one. So now I've got some options for local quilting. Hopefully that means I'll get more of those tops in the "to be quilted" closet finished next year.  Most all the local longarm quilters are busy working on orders for Christmas, so I don't plan on sending anything out till January.  But that doesn't mean I won't start prepping one now.  I have 2 more graduation quilts to finish before May and 2 more that need to be done by December next year.  

Linking up with Patchwork & Quilts, as well as Sell & Tell Monday.  I'll also link up with Favorite Quilt Finish when it gets posted.