A long overdue finish - Color Clams

This is my clambake quilt based on Emily Herrick's tutorial found here. It's a great tutorial and went together pretty quickly. I made the top a while ago, like maybe a year?? I used a collection I found at JoAnns and some other fat quarters here and there. I wish I could remember the name of the collection but I'm sure its not available anymore anyway.  I think this was the probably the second non-baby quilt top I finished.

After it was done I quilted both the cream and the butterfly borders. And then for some reason I can't remember, I went ahead and put the binding on. Probably because I had it finished and ready to go.

But I couldn't decide how to quilt the main portion of the top, where the clams are. Because the binding was on and it looked like a finished quilt, my family began using it. It's a great testament to the quilting basting spray I used that the layers never came apart with all the loving it got. I made sure it never got washed and intended to finish quilting it just as soon as I came up with some amazing quilting design that my limited FMQ skills could manage.

That miraculous idea never arrived and due to some timing issues with my machine my FMQ skills have decreased and I find that most quilting I do these days is with my walking foot.  But this week I decided that it was time to get this off the UFO list!! Since we were all so used to seeing the quilt with no quilting in the center, I decided that I would just stitch in the ditch around the clams. Its not spectacular quilting but at least now I can wash it! And I kind of like that the all the great fabrics and colors of the clams aren't covered by stitching.

The butterfly border fabric is my favorite.  Its so cheerful and such a great combination of darks and brights.

The daisy backing is a fabric I bought on clearance at Hancocks when I first started to quilt.  If I remember right it was $1 per yard.  It is good fabric and if I had known what I was doing I would've bought the whole bolt. As it was I think I bought 5 yards.

Finished dimensions are 71 in by 63 in.