First Finish for 2014 - 2 year old Tula Pink Field Study Quilt (Heather Ross Mendocino Included)

So I finished this quilt top on January 2, 2012.  That's over 2 years ago.  Is it just me or is it frightening how quickly the time passes?

This was the first quilt that I used some of my very precious stash of Heather Ross Mendocino fabric for.  Orange is my favorite color, so it was a big deal for me to cut into it.  I am thrilled to finally be able to use this to keep me warm on the couch and see those seahorses every day!  You can barely see them in the lighter orange arrows at the bottom and top.

I am also on a striped binding kick.  So what better choice than some Heather Ross stripes to finish this off?

Close up of the AWESOME striped binding

Now I'm back to the quilt that I'm making for our guest room.  I started it last spring, and got sidetracked.  What else is new?  The big deal about this quilt is that it's full/queen size, which is the biggest top I've made to date.

Horse Show Ribbon Display Swag - Tutorial

My daughter is in her 3rd year of horseback riding.  She is only 9 now, so she started when she was pretty little.  She only started showing last winter, and last year, she only did two schooling shows.  But this summer, and fall, she started doing formal shows, and ribbons started to pile up.

Some of the other parents said to me "oh, I just took fishing line and hung it corner to corner in my daughter's room, it works fine".  Fishing line?  Not in my house where there's all this fabric laying around.

So I measured the width of the wall I wanted to hang them ribbons on.  It would have been about four WOF cuts, so I cut five 2" strips so that it could swag a bit.  The fabric is from Fleurish by Valori Wells (for Free Spirit).

I did the mitred corners, just as if I was making binding so I could get one long strip.

Then I folded the fabric in half the long way to make a seam, opened the fabric back up, and then folded each side in towards the middle (see the picture below).

Then I folded the fabric together again, so no cut edges were showing, and had about 1/2" wide of a 200" or so long strip.

I sewed a straight line, right up the entire length, right in the middle.  Then I folded the ends back onto the strip and sewed a box to hold them closed.

Here is my sweetie, with her best friend and pony love, Shady.  She has two lessons on him a week and he just loves her to pieces.

This photo was taken at the next to last show for the season, it was a gorgeous fall day and the show was outside.

I hung the strip from one side of the room to the other, and we put all of the ribbons onto it in the order of the places they represent.  She got a lot of 3rds this season, which is fantastic for a first year shower (and there are some 1sts and 2nds in there too!)

There was enough to have three sections, but I couldn't take it all in one photo, so this is the right hand side.  You notice the pink on one wall and blue on the opposite walls?  She wanted her room to look like cotton candy.

This fabric strip is so much prettier and festive looking to me than fishing line.   Besides, I have to find some use for all of this fabric don't I?