I promised pictures of the finished quilt, “The Blonde”, and here they are. It was constructed in a way that is somewhat new for me. I cut freehand (that’s not new), pinned (also not new), and then hand tacked and quilted the entire thing as a first pass of stitching (this was new).

Then I machine-stitched, added more chips of fabric here and there and then alternated between machine and hand stitching until it was done, or in this case, overdone. I’ll admit to preferring the expression and looser quality of the components at an earlier stage (below). I don’t know what to make of the fact that she went from looking at first vulnerable, then angry, and finally, somewhat hardened. To reintroduce the look of vulnerability, I made the eyes too big and overworked them.

Oh well. She has a new home, and that’s good, and I have some real excitement about a way to work that feels more ‘mine’ than previous methods. Also good.