Fourth of July quilt finished!

Last update here.  I finished it about 1pm today, then threw it into the washing machine with a color grabber sheet (in case any of the red bled).  I like it a lot more now that it's finished than when I did when I was working on it.  Each step helped pull it all together.  It was consistently my squarest quilt to date, and ended up being exactly 65" x 78" before the binding was sewn on.

I really like the red binding! 

As I was putting it all together I was thinking about how much history this quilt has, mostly from before I started working on it.  The hand-stitched nine patch blocks came from my dad's girlfriend, that was helping with an estate sale.  She rescued them from the trash and passed them along to me.  Well, Kathy, I hope I did you proud with them :-)  The rest of the fabric in the quilt, except the binding and backing, were from the same box of fabric she gave me, so quite a bit got used!

Detail of the quilting.  I did varied sized loops.  I wanted them to be tight though, to help add strength to the quilt, since I worry about the hand stitching (which will probably be fine...).

The back is a navy blue, which I kind of wish I had used for the sashing...but oh well, I like it for the backing too.

The label, not quite as nice as I would have liked, but machine sewing the binding on was a little tricky around the corners.

So now I have no quilts in progress!  But I just ordered some fabric for the next one, and while I wait I think I will figure out all the details for a second-next one.  Gotta keep busy!