Far Across the Sea quilt finished!

At last I've finished my Cherish Circle Quilt!
The Cherish Circle is part of Do Good Stitches, a charity bee on Flickr. Every month we make 2 blocks  each and every month a new quilt is born to give away to somebody deserving. Our group has made some really gorgeous quilts (take a look at them on the Flickr group), and at least one has gone to the Siblings Together charity, which has made me very happy!

I first wrote about this quilt back in February when I decided on this design for my month being the 'quilter'. I based it on the Across the Sea block, but my block has 4 crosses instead of 1. So I called it Far Across the Sea and I posted a block tutorial here.

I had all the blocks back and the top put together by the end of April but it has taken this long to baste, quilt and bind it!

The quilt is going to a girl with high functioning autism via a charity called Autism Initiatives. I used to volunteer at their Edinburgh drop-in centre and I asked them to identify somebody who would really benefit from a having a quilt made especially for them.

They identified a young girl and the only information I received about her was that she was interested in travel, hoped to go to college one day to study tourism and that her favourite colours were blue, green and turquoise. I probably would never have chosen such a limited palette but I love they way this has turned out!
I hand quilted around all the crosses with perle cotton 8's in a mixture of the same shades.

I couldn't resist a bit of embroidery for the label! I love doing those raised roses from my Sampler Tree embroidery. This label started of as a demo for a tutorial on how to make them - look out for this in my next post.
I used Joel Dewberry's Heirloom Opal in Jade for the backing. I just need to finish off the name on the label and it is ready to hand over. Well done all you Cherish Circle girls for doing such a great job making all those blocks! It has been such a joy studying all the pretty 'new to me' fabrics while I quilted.

And a big thank you for all your support (and sales!) for my embroidery patterns last week!
Somebody has even managed to finish one of the embroideries already!! That would be Elisabeth who lusted after Hester the Hare at the FQ retreat and who was the first person to buy and finish that pattern! She has done a beautiful job and you can see it here.
And there is still time to get your FREE Boris the Bear embroidery pattern - just read this post for details.