Sea Shells by the Sea Shore

Oh, I could get lost in the serenity of this quilt.  The colors, the sea shells; I can almost smell the wonderful sea breeze. Part of that might be because I purchased the fabrics while in San Diego, but I'd like to think it's the quilt. ;)

I am so excited to have this one finished, for a couple of reasons. First, I love the fabrics in this quilt.  It's made almost completely from leftovers of another quilt I made, and they are so soft and calming.  Second, I tried hand stitching the binding, which was a very slow process but I learned a lot from it and am now thinking about applique projects I might be interested in trying.  Later. Not now. I just don't have time for that right now.  It felt like the binding took f-o-r-e-v-e-r...

I'm not a huge fan of patterns, I've mentioned that before, so I kind of made this up on my own as I went. I like how it turned out.  The brown is a little bold, but so is the pink so they can balance each other out.

The backing was a bargain fabric that I blogged about here, and I am in love with it. Too bad I didn't buy more. :)  I wanted to do a simple quilting pattern, so I just did a medium-sized meander on the shells and left the solid colors alone. It seems to compliment the pattern and the feel of the fabric well, and I was really happy with how it turned out.

Then it came time to do the binding. I blogged about the binding here, and was hoping to have it finished within a couple of days.  No luck. Too many distractions and the slow pace of being a new hand-stitcher really slowed down progress.  I am pleased with how it turned out, although it does feel  like I have a lot more practice to do before I am confident in my hand-stitching skills. Since I already had all of the equipment out, I decided to hand-stitch the label, too (something I don't usually do).  That went very quickly and turned out nice.  I am super happy that I decided to do that.

This quilt really came together nicely.  It makes me want to go back to the beach. Here we are at the end of summer though, so this quilt will have to get me through until we can go back next summer. I am linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish Friday.  Have a great weekend, and thanks for stopping by!