My Leader and Ender project for 2016 is done and has been passed along to the Guild for Community Quilts. I had to get it out of the house because if I kept it much longer I’d be wanting to keep it for myself. It’s been folded and stored in a bag for that very reason – out of sight, out of mind.

I’m not sure why I like it so much – is it that the scraps I used in the quilt are some of my favourites or maybe it’s because I can remember where almost every scrap came from. It was my own design, based on something I saw online, but I can see a few things that maybe should have been done differently. There are a few nine patches that didn’t show up well with the background – specifically in the top right corner.

It took forever to quilt. I outlined all the nine patches and then did a free-motion flower in the background squares. The final border was quilted with a meandering pattern – my go-to design! I don’t know why I went to all that trouble (except it was good practice) because the quilting doesn’t show up on either the front or the back.

I used my own backing for this – I loved the top and none of the backings we had for Community Quilts really worked with it. I used a multi-coloured binding, most of which was left from other projects I’ve bound.