are you sitting down?

Everyone who knows me and has been quilting with me for a few years probably remembers this project. I think you should all sit down now to avoid falling over in amazement. I have finished my Amish wall hanging.

This is a project I started after a trip to Amish country in PA. For a few years a friend and I would go to the Quilter's Heritage Gathering each spring. On one of our trips I decided I needed to make this so I purchased the fabrics. They sat for a while until I found the time to piece it (my children were small then). After it was pieced I marked the center portion and started looking for quilting patterns for the border. I knew it was going to take some time to quilt so I wanted to choose patterns I would love forever. It took a few years and a class from Liz Porter on designing feathered quilt designs to come up with what I ended with. The quilt was marked and I started quilting the center. I never worked on it very steadily, but it would come out every so often and I would work on it. One time I took it out and noticed that the outer border looked more gray than black. Like I said, this was a project that I had chosen very carefully so I still loved it and couldn't go on with gray borders. I found some more black and replaced and remarked the borders and started quilting again. It has been sitting in my quilting bag for a while now while I work on more instant gratification projects. This last week we had really cold weather. It was cold in my quilting room, but since I had missed sewing last weekend I was really anxious to accomplish something. I pulled this out and promised myself that this time I was going to finish it. Here it is DONE!

The top picture is closer to the true colors, but you can't really see the quilting so I included the second with brighter lighting, but not true colors.