Yard Sale Quilt Top

I picked up a couple of old quilt tops at a yard sale this weekend for $5 each.  The quilt police may fuss at me, but I figured I could use them to practice quilting on...and they'd make a nice throw around quilt that my girls could play with without me having a fit about it.  They're not great quality or workmanship, so I didn't figure it would hurt.  I just finished up the first one this morning.  I'm not sure of the pattern name, but it used all sorts of fun fabrics. If you happen to know the name of the pattern, let me know.

Tractors!

Another terrific find this weekend was a blog post about Freehand Baptist Fans.  I am so thrilled to find this.  I prefer to freemotion quilt, but had never even considered that I could freehand the Baptist Fan pattern.  I was actually looking for some pattern boards to try them out when I discovered these directions. 

So both discoveries (the quilt tops and the tutorial) happened at a great time, because I wanted to do something at least a little "traditional" on the yard sale tops. 

It went really smoothly and I'm pleased with how it turned out.  Of course, my critical eye sees all the uneveness, and bumps, but I'm gonna give myself a break, because that top was NOT smooth, or flat, and it had some seam intersections as tall as Everest!

By the way, the backing fabric was a 100% cotton Ikea flat sheet I picked up at Goodwill for $2.99.  I used a solid blue for the binding.