My third quilt - trying new techniques

So after achieving success at the County 4-H fair with my second quilt (you can read about it here) , I switched crafts for a few years and worked on some latch hook rugs.  But then came back to quilting.   

I was learning those multi-crafting skills early in life - who knew how valuable that would be to me later! 

For my third quilt I went back to the "baby blocks" that I used for my first quilt but this time after assembling the center motif, I hand-appliqued them onto the background fabric.  I got the borders on and then life happened.  

College, jobs, Grandma's declining health and a whole host of things prevented me from finishing the quilt.  

And then, 20 years later, I got my longarm!  I don't think this was the first project I quilted on my longarm but it was one of the first few.  Again, who said you weren't supposed to do freemotion and ruler work and template work as a beginner! 

By this time, I had "graduated" to quilting cottons instead of cotton-poly blend.   It has some faded spots and that's okay.  I still love it!

And like my other two early quilts, I analyze the design decisions that I made and wonder what would happen if I did that again :)