Up, Up & Away

I actually finished this baby quilt on March 2, but it has taken me this long to get it posted. The photo below is a close up of the quilting.


The balloons are foundation pieced from a pattern I made myself. The large balloons are 5" by 8" and the small balloons are 2.5" by 4".

It was machine pieced and hand quilted. The balloons are quilted in the ditch around the outside of the balloon and then quilted through the balloon to indicate the lines that a hot-air balloon has. To mimic the cloud motif in the background I decided to quilt a seashell pattern. To make the seashell pattern easier to hand quilt, I cut several scallops out of sticky-backed labels (left over from an old political campaign) and stuck them to the quilt, then quilted around them.

It took a long time and it is the most intricately quilted quilt I have made so far. The finished quilt is about 37" by 53".

Update: I entered the quilt in the Pike County Fair last week and it won a Red Ribbon!