My longarm quilter worked her "magic"

All freehand...no marking...every stitch perfect. What can I say???
Lisa Olinger is a magic quilter/artist!

Honest...I was ready to give up. My LA quilter has had this quilt since the end of February.

I had told her I was in no hurry but I did plan on entering it into the big show here in August.

Unfortunately, she did not remember me saying that.

She returned it just 6 days beyond the entering deadline. I still tried to get it in but they refused.

Oh well...maybe next time.

Considering I have never felt that my work deserved to be seen in a show of this magnitude, I am not missing what I have never had.
My LA quilter is Lisa Olinger...an amazing seamstress/quilter/friend. She did her magic all right! There are feathers all around each long legged star. A ditsy spiral in each star center. And she did such a great job. I am speechless.

The next show for the venue I wanted to enter in is in two years. Sigh! I will have to wait. In the meantime, the quilt looks great on my bed. I may have to use it this winter. DARN!

I just finished the hand sewing of the binding. I enjoyed every inch of the sewing. I really liked this quilt while sewing it. I am totally in love with it now.

My wonderful Hubby gave me a Collage photo program. It was really easy to use. The pictures above were taken in February 2010...the dead of winter...a sunny dry day. So I layed it in the driveway. I knew the driveway was clean as I had been shoveling it daily and knew every foot of that concrete!

I struggled with this design, Amelia Earhart by Kaye England. Not in the sewing of it; but she had the design just stopping and not finishing around the edge. So...this was my first time followers...I designed the edges to finish the design. It took me two days but was sooooo worth the time and effort. I do not know how Bonnie Hunter does it with designing quilt after quilt. I felt as if I was "birthing" a baby!

I used every one of the 47 fabrics that were in the quilt in the binding. All the fabric came from my LQS "A Quilt of Many Colors" in Leo, Indiana. The exception was the background toille', it was a stash find. I must have been saving it for this quilt! And I have been saving all of the fabrics from my stash using. They did make it into my last Postage Stamp Swap. I needed 50 different fabrics and here I had 47 all pressed and "together". Now I can work them into my future scrap quilts!

I cut one 10" piece of each fabric. That gave me lots more binding than I needed (470"). I needed 346 ".

But I wanted to err on the safe side. I have never done a binding with such short pieces. I love the effect! Only one corner had a seam really close but it all folded and behaved.

That is why I enjoyed hand sewing the binding on. I got to say hello to each fabric and tried to see if any of the same fabric was close to the binding. Some were! Almost like an "I SPY".