Texas Chain is Finished!!

This gives me such a happy feeling! I started this quilt in January as a New Year's present to myself. And it spent months, literally, hanging around on my design wall. It's one of those quilts that has to be arranged on the wall, and then taken and sewn in a definite order, or it will end up all messed up. Back about a month ago, when we got back from our last vacation trip, I finally got the determination to finish it. And anyone who knows me realizes that when I get determined, that's it. It could also be called stubborn..... ask my husband..... but determined sounds a lot better. (grin)
This quilt was designed by Judy Martin, one of my all time favourites, and is found in her  The Creative Pattern Book. The quilting design is taken directly from a diagram in her book. I saw it, loved it, and wanted to replicate it. The only thing was that it was diagonal cross hatching, ordinarily requiring a lot of time consuming ruler work, and I didn't want it to take that long. So instead of using a ruler, I did a wavy kind of cross hatching, sometimes called "organic".
For the finish, the binding, I used my favourite faux piped binding combined with a diagonally printed stripe. I love how it gives the look of a time consuming bias binding, without doing a time consuming bias binding. If I see a diagonal stripe somewhere in a design or colours I don't have, it comes home with me or gets delivered to me. It's kinda become one of my signatures for a quilt. Speaking of which, I completely forgot to put a label on this one, oops.......
I used a new to me type batting for this one, called Tuscany Wool, from Hobbs. I can't say that I really like the way it behaved while doing the quilting. It has resin added to the surface of the batt, supposed to stop bearding, but it made it act like a stiff polyester batt. The wrinkles from the packaging never fully relaxed, and the quilting came out like a thicker polyester batt. I can see that this batt would have definite advantages for doing quilting that needed a lot of loft, like some of the more modern quilts need.
However, after saying all that, the quilt, now that it is finished, is wonderfully light and airy. I put it on the bed last night, and it was really comfortable to sleep under. I haven't washed it yet, and the instructions say to use tepid water in the machine on a gentle cycle, and lay flat to dry. The gentle cycle I can do, lay flat to dry, on the other hand, is not going to happen, so I have no idea how it will behave in the dryer. I'll have to check my dryer for a gentle cycle, or maybe Matt and Becca's new dryer will have one. So the jury is still out as far as using wool batts. I'll have to work up the courage to put it in the washer and dryer before I know for sure.
I'm going to link up this finish to Crazy Mom Quilts. Then, since I am doing the blog for the London Friendship Quilters Guild this year, I need to go through the photos of last night's meeting, and see which ones are good for use. I was using the guild's camera, so it's not familiar to me for its functions. In case you are interested by the way, there is a free sampler quilt being run on that blog this year, just starting now.