Dragonfly appliqué mini-quilt

I got my latest project hung on the wall today. 😊 For me, this one made quilting into a real hobby (obsession?), instead of just a one-time thing. I was actually working on it concurrently with the hot air balloon, and did the appliqués on this first, as practice for the more intimidating, tiny pieces of the balloon. (Pattern available on Craftsy.) The borders were inspired by this quilt, but I have since seen many piano key borders.

I considered free motion quilting this one, but still need a lot more practice, so it was done entirely with a walking foot. The circles were pretty easy, though all the starting and stopping and burying of threads was a bit tiresome.

The borders turned out to be trickier than I expected. It was only after I started sewing that I realized it would take a miracle to get all the corners to line up perfectly. (They don’t, of course, but I don’t think they look too bad; and I got my start and finish to line up.) This was compounded by the fact that my only marking pen & pencil are both blue, and barely showed up. After a few false starts and some seam ripping, I figured it out.

I wanted to make cute little hanging pockets like on the hot air balloon, but my foldover binding doesn’t allow for it, so I stuck with plain old hanging loops.

I have 4 more quilts in progress, one of which should be done very soon, and 3 more in planning. Onward!