Pink Pickles - Almost Done

I can't believe it's been a week and a half since my last post.  Besides working (at my paying job) and continuing to hand quilt my Jubilee quilt,  I have spent LOTS of quality time at the sewing machine working on Pink Pickles.  I had some areas of the border that needed to be un-stitched, so while I was sitting out on the back porch this afternoon doing that, I thought I'd do an update.

The centers are finally done with the teacup design - YAY!!!  The melons are all outlined and quilted - all 56 of them.  The pink points are all done, but I ran out of red thread so there are still 18 of the red point arcs left to do.

After much deliberation, I decided against doing the teacup design for the outside border area that I did in the centers, and went with just straight line quilting.  I must say that one thing that has taken so long is stitching in the ditch for every little part of this quilt.  When I took the classes with Cindy Needham last spring, she talked about ESS.  That's Every Single Seam or Every Stinkin' Seam.  And while it's a pain, it does make a difference in the final look.

All in all it looks really cool.  I always have trouble getting good pictures that really capture the quilt.  You can see the outside grey arcs are not done yet.  I'm still deciding how I want to quilt those.

 I can't believe that I am almost done and that it has taken me so many hours.  I started this quilt last July on vacation, I ripped the paper arcs in August during my husband's surgery and then spent most of September trying to figure out how to piece the blocks.  Then I spent weeks putting the blocks together and agonizing  deciding how to quilt it. But now the end is almost in sight.  I've learned a lot with the quilt and I'm really happy with it.

Hope your weekend was happy -

Karen