,The last piecing of 2019………..

Was completed just before Christmas and after we arrived at our little winter/Texas abode. Being a bit(!?) ‘space challenged’, when packing for the transition, I try to bring a few of my accumulated kits which will benefit me in two ways: it will help reduce my Minnesota stash and will not result in building a Texas stash (well…….it cuts down on that 2nd one!). This Connecting Threads kit is probably 2 years old and would be a perfect little table topper for our smaller Southern table. It finished at 33” square (after an outer border modification). I must say that putting the individual blocks together went very quickly, but the directions were in error when it came to assembling the rows! Stitching the blocks, as indicated in that above photo, will NOT give you pinwheels with blades of the same color!!!!! Even if you follow the next direction, which is to rotate the 2nd & 4th rows 180*!!!! After some“frogging” (“rip-it”;”rip-it”) session, or two, I had the “duh” moment and rearranged them all appropriately. The outer border needed a little change to make it a tad more interesting (limited by the amount of fabric allowed in the kit), so I added corner blocks of the purple and green and stitched the pinwheel design on them. Much better!!! Stitched “swirls” gave the center area the needed movement and stitching a flower motif in the outer border completed the theme. I left the narrow inner border unstitched for emphasis and “eye-rest”. Some stitching in the ditch was required to define the borders and the corner blocks and that’s where Kelly Cline’s sweet rulers made that process easy-peasy…….. This quilt was stitched on my DSM (Juki 2010Q) and the necessary ruler foot was a modification that I explained in this post. The back view:

Love the pastel feel of this finish: