summertime quilt finish

This was a photo I snapped out of the train window on my Amtrak trip to Chicago this summer. I remember the feeling of looking out at the prairie once we got to Iowa and having a strong sense of place from having grown up in Illinois. The mountains in California are great, but give me wide open spaces any day!

Interesting that I don't think I ever wrote about this particular quilt in progress! The photo on the left is from mid-July 2020. From what I can tell from my archaeological dig, I worked on this that week, and then I do recall not knowing if I wanted to add to it or not, so I hung it up in the closet "for later". Well. Later is now! I conferred with my mom and decided that it could indeed just be finished without any additions and be a nice sized lap or picnic quilt. I had it all sandwiched and pinned up before this trip to Chicago so I could throw it in my luggage, finish it there, and then leave it with mom who said she would enjoy it.  

I remember this being a jelly roll of very cute summer prints - umbrellas, rain boots, bicycles. I took some inspiration from a tutorial at Missouri Star to make the mixture of strip blocks and stars, using colors I had in my stash that serendipitously matched for the star backgrounds. I lucked out finding a fabric for the binding (years later) that coordinates pretty well. Happy to have this one done - it has for sure been one of the primary mental blocks in the closet whenever I've considered starting a new quilt, so the mental space is growing!