TGIFF! Postcard from Sweden Finish

Welcome to TGIFF! This is a celebration of finishes, and I'm happy to be back hosting the second one of 2024. I am also very pleased to show off my second finish of 2024, my third Postcard from Sweden quilt.

Like the first two, this one is not going to live with me, and that is just fine. Like the first two, it is on its way to a good home where I know it will be cherished. If you are interested in hosting TGIFF go here to pick a date to sign up. It's super-easy.

I actually made two tops at the same time when I was cat sitting for Dayna. You can see that post on Instagram. I decided to buy a kit from Mad About Patchwork for this third and fourth one. I planned to make the throw size, and I knew there would be a fair amount of leftover fabric. From what I have in my stash along with that left over from the first two it would probably quite easily make the fourth quilt.

The backstory: Sheila, my niece, fell in love with the second one I made in 2022 when I hosted, for the second time, a Postcard From Sweden quilt along at Tracie’s urging.😁 It’s interesting to note that neither of us have the quilt we made during the quilt along, even though we fully intended to keep it! Sheila offered to buy the quilt and insisted on paying me a fair price, so I told her I would make her another quilt sometime down the road. She loves my quilts; I made her one years ago when she bought her condo; she commissioned a kaleidoscope cushion cover from me a few years ago.

When I was part of the Villa Rosa Designs blog hop last January I chose the pattern Snow Goose, and it evolved into my own spin on it, The Art of Riding Thermals. Sheila had told me a few times how much Dusty, her friend and elder, loves her Postcard From Sweden quilt and how he always comments about it, runs his hands over it, loves the colours in it. Dusty is a residential 'school' survivor, so he has been through a lot, and lives with lasting trauma from that horrid part of Canada's not-so-distant past. Yet he has overcome so much and has taught Sheila so much. In the past couple of years I learned about Quilts For Survivors, an organization in Timmins, Ontario, where I sent a quilt, and intend to send more. However, what better action than to give one directly to a survivor? So I had thought that Thermals would go to him with its beautiful colours. However, it ended up not being big enough for a man’s throw as it only finished at about 42.5” square. 

So I decided The Art of Riding Thermals would go to Sheila as the other quilt I had intended all along to give her, and that Dusty needed his own Postcard quilt. And that’s when I bought the kit.

I decided to quilt it similarly to the first one I made back in 2018 with flowing lines interspersed with various FMQ flowing motifs. Of course Dusty's full name needed to be quilted into his quilt. I used Essential cotton thread from Connecting Threads #21252 Tea Dyed. It blends in well over the variety of colours.

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Here is the backing, the same one I used on Sheila's quilt, Smashing Atoms, by Henry Glass. It's a wide backing I got from Connecting Threads (affiliate link). They have a lot of great wide backs and I've bought several over the past few years. I got two quilt backs from the length I got, whatever you need for a 60" long quilt.

I had planned to do a grey binding, as this was a man's quilt and grey would work nicely with the front and back. I thought of a Kona solid, but then thought, hmm, maybe a grey with a pattern in it would be better... My stack of grey stash sits in the same cubby as my stack of black stash, on top of it. Well, this paw prints fabric was sitting on top of the grey stack (I have no clue why - no recollection of thinking of using it for anything pre-Christmas, so call it serendipity or meant-to-be) but I instantly knew this was it. Sheila's three dogs and Dusty and Wendy's three dogs LOVE to race around in the bush near Athabasca, Alberta where they live, so of course those 24 paws needed to be in the quilt!

This is the second quilt I've used Smashing Atoms, as well as two makeup bags and I never saw the black in the backing until I started sewing on the binding.

Here is an outside shot, hoping for better colour...nope. The inside ones are much truer. It's so strange how blue a tone outdoor photos have in winter even though we have no snow. We actually got a bit overnight but it's now gone, several hours later.

I didn't do a label on his quilt, but chose to write the deets in some of the rays of the atoms.

It's on its way to Alberta, along with a quilt for Wendy, Dusty's wife. I mean they each need a throw under which to lounge while they watch TV or read or snuggle with the dogs, right? So Global Garden has been patiently waiting for its forever home and since Sheila told me that Wendy loves earth tones, I know this is the quilt for her.

Of course I quilted in her name too! Another bit of wow serendipity, meant-to-be-ness about Wendy's quilt is that one of the browns I used to bind her quilt is from that first quilt I made Sheila when she bought her condo! It pays to hang onto fabric to let it simmer and become vintage, right?!

Quilt Stats:

Pattern: Postcard from Sweden (you will get the pattern in with your kit purchase at MAP or at Cali Quilt Co in the US) It shouldn't be being given or sold anywhere else as Kelly Liddle has disallowed this.

Size: 48.5" x 60.5"
Fabric: Robert Kaufmann Kona 

Batting: Pellon polyester

Backing: Henry Glass Smashing Atoms

Quilted: on Avril 79 804 stitches

Threads: pieced on my 1951 Featherweight with Gütermann cotton; quilted with Essential cotton thread, Bottom Line in the bobbin

Linking up

My Quilt Infatuation

Confessions of a Fabric Addict

Alycia Quilts

Quilting & Learning - What a Combo!

TGIFF at mmmquilts !

Songbird Designs

In case you haven't heard, Make Modern issue #56 (affiliate link) comes out today! This means that I can release my pattern (see sidebar) which will happen within the coming week. I absolutely love this magazine for so many reasons, and I can't wait to snuggle up in a chair, quilt on my lap, maybe Bella too, while I peruse the quilts and articles within!

There's an extra reason you may wish to subscribe to the magazine: the price is going up, so now is the time.

What did you finish this week? Link up below! Remember this is for finishes only please, not in-progress quilts. Thank you!

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