Artic Blue

 June is the month to sew our blue scraps at RSC.  But before I work on the various block sets I'm making I decided it was a good opportunity to machine quilt Artic Blue.  After all, this quilt has been all pinned up and waiting very patiently for a while now.   It all started with a fat quarter of seals, penguins, polar bears, snow leopards, lynxes and birds included in in several boxes of fabrics I  received when my elderly neighbour Dorothy went into a rest home.  The plaid binding was a few strips of Dorothy's fabric too.

Artic wild life

This lovely fabric was much too interesting to cut up, I decided, so I added a few borders to make it into a cot sized quilt.  The inner cream border was a piece of sleepy polar bear fabric, a gift from my quilty friend in Canada ages ago, it would go nicely too, I decided.  Enough pieces of batting were Frankenbatted together to fit, and I used some pale blue wincyette (flannel) for the backing.

More polar bears

As the quilt top was already layered and pinned, it didn't take me too long to do some serpentine quilting stitches done.

Quilting time

I'm one of those quilters who loves hand stitching the binding down, which took me a couple of days relaxing in my easy chair in the afternoons.    Gemma decided this quilt with the warm flannel backing was just too cozy to ignore, so jumped up on my lap while I was stitching away.  You know what that means, don't you.  Time to stop stitching and  enjoy a cuddle with Gemma for a while.  I do like to use  those plastic binding clips, no pins jabbing me when I least expect it.

Binding time

So it's all finished now, a nice little cot quilt for donation.  I'm really pleased how this turned out.  

Artic Blue

But I have to admit, I have another similar small quilt top stitched up using some more of Dorothy's fabric, a different fabric featuring more polar bears, penguins and puffins.  I'll get it finished sometime.