Ta-Daa!!!

A few nights ago now, as my son bathed, I sat and watched him and put the last stitches into Escapees.  I tacked down the hang tabs, and then threw it in the wash with my laundry.  I was a little nervous - this is the first quilt I've done without pre-washing all of my fabrics first, in forever

Not the  best picture - I'll have to take another when I've got a proper wall display set up.  Escapees is a bit too large for the three meager pins holding it up at the moment, so it's a bit saggy.

I'm very pleased with the quilting.  I straight line stitched throughout the piece, which nicely emphasizes the simplicity of the shapes as well as the floral print - if I do say so myself, lol.  Actually, the floral panels are done in a diagonal cross hatch pattern.  I'd originally planned on doing those panels with free-motion flowers, but a test run showed that free motion flowers detracted far too much from the print itself.

I outline stitched around all of the triangles, 1/4" in from the seam lines.  I used two different colors in the top thread:  a burnt umber to match the sky and a blue that matches the floral print.  The burnt umber thread was used in the robin's egg blue geese.  The blue thread was used in the burnt umber sky triangles. For the green and black sashing strips, I stitched 1/16" away from the seam lines to out line the black.

Throughout the quilt, I used black thread in the bobbin, giving the back what I think is a really cool graphic quality.  I'm really enjoying playing with my threads, so it's a theme I'm sure I'll continue with future quilts.

And now that I have this one finished, I might have a second quilt finish to show off soon-ish.  I'm prepping the backing for Flying Geese II, and I'm hoping to get the works on the quilt frame tonight.