Happy Days Are Here Again!

All twenty bottles are now quilted.  Hooray, hooray!  The hardest part of this quilt is complete.  In the end, the last 4 bottles weren't as difficult as I thought.  Always a nice surprise!

The biggest challenge was selecting a thread color to blend well

with the various colors.

Funny, the thread I bought for the watermelon looked just right at the store, but all wrong at home.  Turned out the peach thread was a better match.  I wish quilt shops would make an effort to provide good lighting over the thread rack, and/or place it near a window with natural light. 

Now I'm toying with the borders.  FMQ leaves perhaps?

Curvy lines?

Zig zags?

I wish EQ6 did a better job of superimposing the stencils.  My intention is to make the borders equal in size and shape in both directions to get a clean intersection.  I haven't figured out how to make it look like that in EQ6 though.  Maybe I need to upgrade?

A fourth option is to use a double needle and stitch a straight line down the center of each border and sash.  I may go that route in the interest of time.   Or - a single line, using a decorative stitch.

I need to get this in the mail by about April 10, and no quilting will get done next weekend.  So the simpler the better....

When I need a reprieve from this task, I've been designing barn quilt blocks and submitting them here:

http://www.accuquilt.com/barnquilt.html?utm_source=BE120313P&utm_medium=bq12f&utm_campaign=bq12

Dug out the sketch book I'd used back in college to design some blocks that never got made.  I'm trying to recreate some of these in EQ6 for the contest.  Its been a great way to better learn to use the program.  I even recreated some applique blocks.

Both the Bottle Quilt and the Barn Quilt Contest have an early April deadline, so there's no time to waste!  :)