August Finish #2--Crossroads

My focus on machine quilting this month is paying off, with another quilt completely finished. It is extremely rare for me to finish two quilts in the same month (and there's still plenty of August left to go!) This is Crossroads in Green.

Crossroads in Green

Finished size after washing 44" x 56"

The top for this quilt was made in the summer of 2014 as part of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. At that time I had been seeing many other quilters making the pattern and really liked the look of it. Some call the pattern Crossroads, but the more traditional name seems to be Patience Corner (or Corners.) The blocks are very easy to make, using only two different shapes. Here is a single block so you can get an idea about how it goes together.

The finished size of my blocks is 12". I might have made more for a bigger quilt, but I was running low on the background fabric. If you are interested in the block pattern, you can find a tutorial for making the blocks in three different sizes HERE.

I pieced the back for my quilt from two chunks of green fabrics. This was also done in August, 2014. I got it all layered and pin basted and started quilting. concentrating on stitch-in-the-ditch around the green rectangles in the blocks. After that I was stuck on how to quilt the rest of it, so the quilt was stashed in the closet of unfinished quilt tops until I pulled it out earlier this month.

For the quilting in the background squares, I drew an X from corner to corner of each square with blue wash-out marker and used that as a guide for orange peel curves. I didn't draw the curved lines, just tried to make the curves approximately the same distance from the guidelines.

The wishbone quilting in the white inner border also had markings to helped keep it spaced evenly. I marked dots 1" apart and 1/4" from each edge of the border. When I did the quilting, I aimed to loop around each dot as the quilting went back and forth between the top and bottom. Next time I'll try doing it without any markings.

The scrappy green outer border has two "parallel" wavy lines of quilting. Instead of marking guidelines, I used masking tape and stitched next to that.

It's always fun to see what the quilting looks like on the back. The darker green backing fabric was also used for the binding.

That's my second free-motion quilting completion for the month. My goal is to spend at least 15 minutes every day working on my FMQ skills, and so far I have been successful with that goal. Quilt #3 is under the needle, and there are plenty more to choose from after that one is finished!

Linking up with:

Midweek Makers at Quilt Fabrication

Wednesday Wait Loss at Inquiring Quilter

Needle & Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation

Finished or Not Friday at Alycia Quilts

Rainbow Scrap Challenge at So Scrappy 

Oh Scrap! at Quilting is more fun than Housework

Happy quilting everyone!

Julie in GA