California Dreamin'

Last week, I flew to California for a few days. Of course I wanted to take a quilt with me to photograph on the beach, so I turned a panel into a quick finish!

And yes, I DID sew with my battery-powered sewing machine on the plane!

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Do you remember THIS QUILT that I made a few months ago? I cut up a different California panel to create a jumbo postcard!

But I still had this larger Coastal California panel leftover, and it was begging for it's own photo shoot in the sun! (I found a few of the panels on Etsy HERE.)

Image credit to Riley Blake Designs

I found some Aurifil thread in my stash that matched really well! These are a mix of 40wt, 50wt, and 40/3 threads. 

I pin basted the panel on my dining room table with Hobbs Wool batting and a solid light gray on the back. (I have a whole bolt of the gray that I keep on hand just for projects like this!)

Then I free-motion quilted it on my Juki TL-2010Q machine. It went really fast and only took a couple hours to do! I grabbed a yellow solid from my stash for the binding and machine sewed it on. (Tutorial HERE.)

I even remembered to sew my label on when doing the binding!

It was so fun to take it out for a photo shoot at the beach! It was a pretty windy day, so it took several attempts to get a photo without it blowing away!

The quilting adds just the right amount of texture to the panel - which finished at about 36" x 42" - a good lap quilt!

A peek at the back shows off the quilting too!

While in California, we drove along the coast, saw seals, visited an ostrich farm, went to many quilt shops, visited a luffa farm, watched people surfing in the waves, and much more! It was a wonderful trip!

And I love that I have a quilty souvenir to remember it by!