River Pond QAL: Finish Quilt Top

This post is part of the River Pond Quilt Along. You can find more info and the schedule HERE. You can purchase the River Pond pattern HERE.

Quick Note

Wow. A lot has changed in the last in the past couple of weeks. My heart goes out to those who are suffering whether with health, job insecurity, finance trouble, being over burdened or overworked. I feel for those who are overwhelmed with anxiety or fear – of the present and for the future. As well as anyone just going stir crazy from being “locked up” in our homes.

How are you processing everything? Are you doing ok? I wish I could personally reach out to everyone and give you a big hug and find some things to laugh about and make everything ok.

I’ll be honest, my coping method has been sharing funny memes on Facebook. As hard as I try, I have not been able to concentrate on anything! I have done some good cleaning, got all of the laundry washed (and am hoping that everyone stays in their pajamas for the next month so I don’t have to do it again any time soon. lol.) I celebrated my birthday, we’ve been eating some good food, and have enjoyed being creative with my kiddos.

Now that I write that out, I feel like I haven’t completely wasted my time, but I am one who likes to be busy, so “taking a break” has been good for my soul – to sit with the emotions instead of distract myself away from them. I can’t say they are comfortable emotions, but the more comfortable I become in them, the better I feel and the more I can do.

I HAVE started doing some yoga! Which makes me realize how much more I need it in my life. I used to do it all the time, but it’s been a couple years. If you have 15 min and want to try it out, this is what I’ve been doing this week: https://vimeo.com/266509501 – I REALLY like Ashleigh Sergeant and all the videos I’ve done with her.

And here is another fabulous set of 15 minute routines that I absolutely love! This one is on DailyOM so you pick what you pay (anywhere from $15 -$50) which is a nice feature and there are 21 lessons. I always feel so good after doing one of these!

https://www.dailyom.com/cgi-bin/courses/courseoverview.cgi?cid=863

Anyway… what I really want to say is that I am here if you need anything! AND I have some really fun stuff planned out and coming up. I’ll be posting about it next, so stay tuned! I want to provide some fun things that we can do for the next little while, so I hope you’ll stick around for it! 🙂

Finish Quilt Top

One thing that will be great to do with all of this “extra” time that everyone is talking about… (I don’t know about that. With 6 kids home ALL the TIME I don’t feel like I have any extra time… just more… joy! 😉 Which I do. but with less time.) So many tangents.

Anyway, let’s finish our River Pond quilts!!!

If you’ve been following along with the blog, you should have your center pieced, your flying geese made and assembled, your side strips assembled, and should be ready to piece all the sections together now.

Here’s how I went about doing that:

I sewed my side strips to the larger background sections to either side of the center.

TIP: Make sure that your flying geese are pointing to the background pieces when you sew them together.

I started with the side with the narrower background piece and sewed it to the left side of the center section.

TIP: Before I started sewing, I pinned the two sections together. As I pinned, i lined up the center of the flying geese with the point of the large diamond in the center section.

I didn’t take a picture while sewing it, but you can see the teal line I drew that shows how all the points line up.

The yellow circle shows where you need to pay attention to aligning the white point with the center of the geese.

Repeat step 2 with the other side. Then press your seams and press the top of the quilt.

I am really happy with how this quilt top turned out. I have some fun quilting ideas to help spruce it up some more, but I’ll talk about that in a future post. 🙂

Homework

If you haven’t already, assemble your quilt top.

Be sure to share your photo so we can all cheer you on! And if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask! 🙂 I’m here for ya!

Join the From Blank Pages Community on Facebook to see what others are making, give feedback on others questions, share your progress and plan, get inspired, and meet other awesome quilters!

If you’re on Instagram, tag me, @fromblankpages, and use #fbpRiverPond so we can all see what you’re up to and comment!