First Quilt Finish for 2013!

Woohoo! Another quilt done - the first for 2013. Well, to be fair there wasn't that much left to do on this one when I stopped quilting it so I could get my Christmas projects finished last year but I won't let that bother me!

I bought the fabric for this quilt in March 2011 when my dear hubby and I had a lovely weekend away at Aldinga, SA. I got them from Mallee Country Quilts in McLaren Vale (who are currently in the process of moving to the Riverland). The fabric range is designed by Leesa Chandler and is the best Australian native floral fabric I've seen.

Before I got around to finishing this quilt I used the fussy cut leftovers to make my Waratah Wonder wallhanging at a class by Heather Ridley (more about it on this post).

Well, when Kymberley (my husband's daughter) saw that one she said she'd love to have something similar to hang on the wall in their home when she and her hubby Scott moved back to Canada, which I was happy to do however I could not get the fabric anywhere by that stage!

Luckily, however, Leesa brought out a second range early last year which was what I used for my 'A Bunch of Aussies' wallhanging for Kymberley and Scott (more about that one here). I didn't like that range as much as the first as the colours weren't quite as rich and the flowers were smaller but with a bit of perserverance I made it work!

I've since found out that the favourites from the range will in future be available (in Australia only) on an ongoing basis, so that's excellent news!

Anyway to get back to this quilt, I decided to quilt it by outlining only the flowers as I thought it would make them stand out and although its hard to see in the photos (sorry, some are a little fuzzy around the edges!), it worked!

Paper daisies on the left and bottle brush flowers on the right

 Flannel flowers

 Paper daisies (or everlasting daisies)

Waratah flowers

Anyway, I designed this wallhanging to take advantage of the design of the border fabric. It was made up of rows of different flowers across the fabric so the size of the borders etc were to make the most of those.

Close up of stitching on the bottle brush!

I've joined up with Marti's Thirteen in '13 UFO Challenge this year and this was my January project (I cheated a little there as I knew I didn't have much to go on this one but a finish is a finish and now its no longer a UFO!)