Chloe's Quilt

The story of how my first quilt, Chloe's quilt has come about is as follows.

My name is Carla and I live in Tropical North Queensland outside the small town of Bartle Frere. My husband and I have a small farm there.

Beginning 2011 we had cyclone Yassi come through which did a lot of damage outside, but most importantly took out a small vanilla plantation.

A few months later our beloved dog Chloe, at only 4 years old was diagnosed with a malignant colon cancer which was a terrible blow. As my husband has to work away from home a lot I decided I needed to do something for myself to help me to deal with this situation.

Inspired by the movie Julie & Julia I thought to teach myself something new, challenging and give myself a year to do it. (Like Julie in the movie cooking every recipes from Julia Child's book within the year)

A quilt I thought and stumbled on the Glorious colour website, could not look at any other option but Roseville Album by Kim Mclean, was it even possible to make something so beautiful? A starters pack and pattern was ordered and I started my quilt June 2011.

What a journey it has been, I kept going and going coming to the end I decided to take the first 3 blocks out and rebalance the quilt.

Hand appliqued, machine pieced, hand quilted and finished early this year. Last but not least Chloe is happy and healthy which is just a miracle!  Without the inspiration of Kim's stunning work and designs and all glorious applique contributors I feel I would not have pulled it off. 

A big thanks to you all. 

Carla 

As shared with me from Carla! It's positively AMAZING!!! And, so...sew GLAD to learn Chloe is well!!! : ) Piecefully, Pam

Well, I have completed more than I realised!

I was ready to organise my next couple of blocks for appliquéing and I  thought I would put the completed ones on the design wall. I hadn't realised how many I had finished. The photos are not the best and the layout is a bit random at the moment.

Not a good photo, but these are the right and left side panels unpressed. 
Thanks for the info re: trimming them to size.  I have two borders left to stitch.  I had started working on the border after completing the center squares rather than leaving all of them to the end. 

You thought I forgot, didn't you

As you can see, I finally finished my Lollipops. It already hang at a local craft exhibition.
I spent an incredible amount of time thinking about how to quilt it. In the end, I just opted to machinequilt around the shapes.
I changed the way the binding was done, because from the very start that small line around the quilt bothered me. I feel it didn't fit all the squares and the busy quilt. So I added rectangles instead of squares at the exterior and used those to finish of the quilt. I have to admit the upper one does have a tendancy to faint but I can live with that, since the quilt is meant to be used.

I am very happy with how it turned out.

And thinking of which one to make now, since I enjoyed it so much.

Have fun,

Françoise in Belgium

Question

I am just completing my last panel of the Roseville Album quilt.  I am wondering what is the best method to use in trimming the panels to the finished size. 

Mary