Alleluia! Crown of Thorns

Easter is here, and I finished my Crown of thorns quilt, started a couple of years ago. It all began when DS Jamie asked me for a piece of fabric to use to wipe the excess stain from a scroll sawn picture. I found a piece of a coarse woven polyester blend that I would "never use in a quilt" and thought nothing of it until he came back in the house and handed the fabric back to me with a picture on it. Instead of wadding up the fabric and wiping the stain off he carefully laid the fabric over the picture and pressed on it to absorb the stain. So i couldn't just throw the fabric away....I washed it a few times to get rid of the smell of the stain and put it away in my scrap drawer to maybe use someday in a quilt. Then a few months later I made a some crown of thorns blocks for something...I really cannot remember what! Anyway when I ran across that block it hit me that it would be perfect to use with the printed block of Christ carrying the cross. I tried to choose fabrics from my stash that would pick up the reddish brown color of the stain. Gold to frame the central block and square it up the same size as the Crown of Thorns blocks. I cut all the fabrics and sewed a few blocks before life got busy with gotta do projects and this was packed away for a while. Last Lent I pulled it back out and finished piecing it, and started hand quilting on the picture block, intending to hand quilt the whole thing.....yeah right!!! I do not know how to hand quilt (maybe someday I'll take a class and learn the right way to do it) and it is a very slow process using a stab stitch. The stitches are uneven, and i would never enter this in a judged show. When I wasn't finished last easter, the project was once again shelved as more urgent projects grabbed my attention. Then Palm Sunday I decided to just sit and watch a movie with the family and do some hand work. I pulled this project out and finished the handquilting of the center block and decided the rest would be machine quilted. I decided to try to finish by Easter and I accomplished that..... Now I need to get back into working on Jannie's Wedding Quilt. Less than 3 months until the wedding!