Plus Quilt Finish, and Bonnie Lass

I joined Jeni Baker's Plus Quilt (AKA Arithmetic Quilt) quilt along as a reason to make a quilt to donate. Unlike many quilters I know, who make and make quilts only to give away, I selfishly keep nearly all my quilts, later selecting people I want to give them to. 

So making this was a break from my selfish quiltmaking. It's 40½" X 54".

Batting is Quilter's Dream 100% Cotton Select, the last piece of a half-roll, split with a friend. After previously quilting almost exclusively with Cotton Request (Quilter's Dream lowest loft), I have found that I prefer Request loft. When shoving around a quilt under my sewing machine needle, it's easier to maneuver a large quilt that's batted with a lighter-weight loft.

I pieced a backing that has one large plus.

Thread is 28-weight yellow Aurifil on top, and 50-weight of the same color in the bobbin. 

Quilting is an all-over design I saw on @ipatchandquilt, Esther's Instagram feed. She made a video of it. The design begins as a snail trail, but as you quilt back out of the spiral, you make three little "fingers." 

front

Sometimes I got carried away and quilted four fingers, or put the fingers on the outside of the spiral, but no matter. It was a fun design to quilt (few stops and starts), and I easily accomplished it in a day.  

back

Thank you, Peggy, for being my quilt-holder!

With an empty design wall - for a change - I almost immediately set to filling it up again, this time with scrappy blocks pieced for a Bonnie Lass quilt. I haven't yet joined the blocks, because I'm auditioning fabric for the setting triangles that are needed on all four sides.

The pattern shows a low volume print as setting triangles, but I'd rather have something more impactful. The problem is that I have very few prints that are ⅝" of a yard!

I'm limited to these three, and am leaning toward the orange one at the bottom, a Moongate print by Christina Camelli. 

Book Recommendation

All the Dangerous Things by Stacy Willingham follows a young mother, Isabelle Drake, whose infant son Mason has been missing for nearly a year. Though her husband left her six months ago, she has continued to research, study, investigate, and make public appearances with hopes of identifying the person who abducted Mason. 

A podcaster comes into Isabelle's life who seems to believe her - that she herself didn't do something to Mason. Yet over the course of two weeks with him, she second-guesses her own behavior based on a childhood experience, and watching videos of herself as she sleep-walks. As she reaches the difficult conclusion that she is responsible, she visits her parents where she learns that her childhood remembrances aren't quite accurate, and in fact, the podcaster has more involvement in solving the abduction than she first thought. 

After reading so many such who-done-it novels, I know that it's never an un-introduced character who's guilty, but this author did a good job of keeping me guessing about which character was guilty. 

Linda's score: 4.2/5.0

Have a lovely, long Memorial Day weekend, my friends! Linda