Home Sweet Home

My first finish of 2017!

I do not generally participate in the Row by Row experience, but I am on the email mailing lists for the quilt shops in my metro area so I see their rows each summer.  The 2016 theme was "Home Sweet Home." One of my local shops designed a row that highlighted North Carolina and included the state outline with a heart cutout in our area, plus the state bird (cardinal) and state flower (dogwood).
 

Row from Sew Much Fun, Lowell, NC

I really liked the North Carolina symbols and of course dogwoods are my favorite!  (You can read why I have dogwood in the name of my blog here.)   So I made a trip to Sew Much Fun in Lowell, NC just to get the kit for their block.  The kit included the applique pieces with fusible web attached and already cut--saving the time of cutting out the applique shapes made it totally worth buying the kit!  Otherwise, there's a decent chance I would never have finished the project!

Since mine was going to be a stand-alone wall hanging instead of a row in a bigger quilt, I didn't make the log cabin blocks.  I cut out a background and layered it with batting and backing, then quilted a 2" diagonal grid.  (I thought I took a picture of this part, but I can't find it.)  Then I laid out the applique shapes and used a satin stitch to secure them, so that acted as additional quilting.  Here is my finished mini quilt:

It finished at 9 1/2" x 26".  I believe this is my 4th quilt that featurs dogwoods in some way.  It's a kit so I'm not sure of the fabrics, but Sew Much Fun sells mostly Moda so I suspect most are Bella Solids.  The dogwoods have a tiny pattern and might be grunge or something similar. The binding is Kona Pepper, leftover from Here, Fishy Fishy.

Close-up of North Carolina Applique

This was goal # 13 on my list of 2016 Q4 goals for the globally hosted Finish Along.  That linkup is still open so I'm linking up, even though I technically finished this in 2017.