Finish it up Friday: Garden Snails Quilt

 I finished the Garden Snails quilt top on July 31 but didn't quilt and bind it until this past week.  I was seriously scared of using my longarm on it- that's probably a post for another day.  But I recently realized that in 2017, I have made four quilt tops and quilted none of them.  I decided to just go for it- finally! 

The Garden Snails Quilt QAL was an activity on IG that I participated in, hosted by Angie at GnomeAngel.  I have finally realized that I really like participating in QAL's because there are deadlines (I really like Gretchen Rubin's 4 Tendencies framework and I am definitely an obliger) and a sense of community. 

This quilt was not easy for me even though it shouldn't have been difficult.  My big problem was that after I finally settled on a color and fabric scheme- I did the snail tails wrong and didn't realize until I had made at least 7 snails!  I am actually glad someone asked me on IG why I was making the tails so big- I hadn't caught the error myself. 

  

The fabrics I used for this quilt included: Cirrus Solids in rain for the background (a while ago I came upon an Etsy seller who was transitioning her fabric shop to a custom embroidery shop and I scored tons of Cirrus Solids fabrics for super cheap - it was AWESOME and it's my favorite fabric to use as a background in my quilts).  The other fabrics I used were a bundle of Made by Rae's Lotus Pond and a Michael Miller creamy white solid for the snail bodies.  I threw in a few other stash fabrics to mix with the Lotus Pond too. 

When I finally quilted the quilt top this past week, I aimed for "snail trails"- wavy lines with a few swirls thrown in.  I was pretty happy with how it came out!

For the backing, I had three yards of the Lotus Pond snail fabric and then I raided my blues (a fabric color I don't use as often as I should) to fill in the rest. 

The binding is a white on Navy cross-hatch from the House of Hoppington collection.  I really love it!

This is probably my last finish of 2017- it feels so good!  Linking up to Finish it up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.