April goal: Windy, but complete!

Some days/weeks, it feels like Mother Nature conspires against me when it comes to taking outdoor quilt pictures. This was one of those weeks! 

I finished my April goal for A Lovely Year of Finishes (finishing the quilt top for the improv herringbone blocks I won through the Great Lakes Modern Quilt Guild) during the windiest week we've had in quite a while. Today, with the month coming to an end, I decided to take my chances, as I really wanted to photograph this outside on my little quilt photo clothesline. 

I started with this:

and then caught a calm 2.5 seconds to grab this shot:

before things got really wild:

The sun peeked out for a minute, and I do love the see-through stained glass look of this shot!

Two things I learned while assembling this quilt:

1) Particularly when your blocks come from different sources, since not everyone's 1/4" seam is the same, make sure to measure/square up blocks before assembly! The blocks were all close, but when the sashing is only 1" wide, there's not a lot of wiggle room!

2) With a block that has this many seams/non-straight-of-grain edges, I should have stitched around each block prior to handling and sewing them together, just for stability. 

It all came together just fine, but it's always good to learn something from each project!

Next up: figuring out how to quilt this one. I purchased my first Craftsy class--Jacquie Gering's "Creative Quilting with Your Walking Foot"--in hopes of coming up with some ideas (but I'm open to suggestions too!) I'm really looking forward to getting this finished and taking it back to share with my guild friends.

p.s. Also sharing on Quilt Story's Fabric Tuesday!