Oh Captain, My Captain!

I'm so happy to finally be able to share my secret project from the past few months. I have given it to the newly married couple so it's safe to show it off now. First, a few stats:

Size: Queenish
Pixels: ~4500 2" squared
Subject: Captain Jean-Luc Picard
Timeline: Apr 6-Aug16



Playing around with a new app on my phone. Here you can see the back and front.
 

As I mentioned above, I started this in April and finished it with only enough time to drive to the wedding rehearsal (ok, I was 10 minutes late). Those last few hours were a little stressful and I don't think I have ever bound a quilt that quickly. My clover clips really came in handy on this one!

So, I pretty much followed the same process as with my Sheldon Quilt but used larger pieces of interfacing so that it was much quicker and easier. This also made the squares line up more cleanly. This was the first quilt that I free-motion quilted. I probably should have started on something smaller but it turned out pretty well in the end. I had originally planned to send Picard to a long-arm quilter but they weren't sure they would be able to get a good result because of the way it was put together. This was a good learning experience though and I will definitely continue free-motion quilting in the future.

For now, I'm resting my poor exhausted arms and mentally planning my first commission which is due to start about today. This will be my first real stab at a full-size applique quilt so wish me luck!

Quilting the days away!



Here is the correct-ish quilting. I LOVE the feel of it.



It's Monday. I'm happy to be back at work today. What?!? Yeah, that's because my arms are too tired to do any quilting right now. I spent the entire weekend quilting the secret project. This was my first stab at free-motion quilting and I'm thinking I should have started with a baby quilt rather than something queen sized. That'd be too smart though, right? I'm not one for taking the easy way out unless there are no other options. Here are a couple of pictures of the quilting. It's not bad for the first run but I'm learning as I go.

Here's the terrible messed up quilting - although I do kind of like the look of it, my tension was way off on this.



And Here's my adorable puppy. Well, he's 3 but with his haircut he looks like a puppy. He's peering out of the cargo netting we put on the back of the jeep to keep these two in there.