Almost blown away... and a quilt to share

At the top of my to-do list has been a quilt for my mother - and five days ago I finally finished it.  I went out on Monday and took photos, then on Tuesday we had the strongest winds I've ever known - I think they were the worst in forty years.  Canterbury, NZ, is known for strong north-west winds that come over the Southern Alps and gust across the plains.  Luckily no-one was hurt and most of the damage is to trees,  power lines and irrigators - and so we have had no electricity for three days.

Everything is now back to normal - and we were lucky we had a generator, a log-burner and gravity fed water in the meantime.  K even enjoyed running around with torches and getting to see almost as many candles as a birthday party.

So... here is the latest quilt I have finished.

It is made with a jelly-roll of 'Petite Odile' by French General.  I had seen a picture of a quilt made like this then tracked down this tutorial on how to do it.

I really free motion quilted it using this fantastic tutorial from Oh Fransson! and although I have certainly not made the most even shapes, they look quite good as a whole.  I did 'stitch-in-the-ditch' between each 6" square to add extra stability.  The size of my squares was on the big side for quilting like this - but it worked.

Once again I've had great fun taking photos in my garden -

 

 You can almost see in this picture (above) that I backed the quilt with some more of this FG fabric and used the same fabric for the binding.

So 'Happy Belated Birthday' Mum... I hope you enjoy your quilt... I'm looking forward to giving it to you in a month's time.

Here are two pictures of the damage the wind this week did to trees...

...this is a large cedar that fell in the garden - luckily I was wanting it down anyway - and it fell in exactly the right place, avoiding the rhododendrons around it.

... and this is a plantation near us - that was a whole block of trees, once.

I'm going to try linking this all up with 'finish it up Friday' on 'Crazy Mom Quilts'.  My first time trying this - we'll see if it works.  :-)