Quilt-A-Long Top Finished!

Sipping a cup of dark, hot coffee, morning sunshine bathing the room, and a finished top covering the ironing board; I'm in heaven! My wish would be that I could offer you a cup of coffee or tea and that you could join me to celebrate. The pictures just don't do it justice. After all of that fussing over how to put these quilt-a-long blocks together, it kind of just flowed into this. I set each block just a little bit off kilter. It's hard to see the wonkyness, but in person it has just a bit of my modern sensibility. Then I added sashing and a border with corner blocks. When I started quilting along with AmandaJean, it was simply to get some practice sewing again and refamiliarize myself with and learn new quilting techniques. I really didn't have any idea in my head that this would even turn out to be a quilt. Now I can't wait to put it together into a finished piece. I just can't say how much I appreciate AmandaJean for all the time and effort she put into making the quilt-a-long happen.
I think I'm proudest of how square the blocks are and the quilt too. Be sure to check out the flickr group for the quilt-a-long. It's so much fun to see all the different quilts that are being created from the same set of blocks.
Besides working on this top, I've been hand quilting away on the Fence Rail quilt. It takes me about an hour to do each block. I think I have about 45 left to go. I think I'm realizing why I put this quilt away for so many years. Though I love the touch of the hand on a quilt and I enjoy hand quilting, it is time consuming. I have committed to working on it at least a bit each day.