Saturday, December 29, 2012

End-of-year finishes!

With only two days left in the year, I am using my time to best effect by attempting to finish as many of items on my To Do list as possible. And just watch me go! I finished two more tops and a binding this week alone. AND I have lots of pictures.

First, adoption news. My first Christmas quilt has found a new home! Thankfully, it is with the person I actually had in mind when I made it - my sister. If she hadn't wanted it, it would have gone to a niece or nephew, but I'm glad she liked it. I so seldom make calm quilts, that it's nice to have someone who appreciates them when I do.

Here are two photos of the finished quilt. I am a firm believer in doing whatever I want on the inside of the quilt because I can always fix it with borders if I need. to. I was not in love with the inside of the quilt, but this is a perfect example of a time when the perfect border makes the perfect quilt. In person, the multicolored patches don't really stand out as much as they do in the photos. Thank you, Sister, for liking my first Christmas effort.




I also completed the top of my fourth Christmas quilt. Okay, the second and third Christmas quilt tops are STILL loud even with borders, but they're meant to be. This fourth top is completely different. It actually has a pattern to the 36-patch blocks.

First, I want to show you pictures of my guest room bed. I put different quilts on it, and I LOVE the way they look.



Anyway, now to cover the bed with my new tops. Here is the latest Christmas quilt thrown over the top of my pretty blue scrap quilt. See what I mean about a different look to the 36-patches?



I love taking far off pictures of this quilt. A person can get dizzy looking at it for too long. In fact, I had so much fun looking at the dizzying aspect of it that I forgot to take photos of it from the side, so there aren't any where you can see the entire borders. I did take a couple of photos of the corners to show you. The bottom right and top left corners follow the same pattern as the first three Christmas quilt.


The bottom left and top right corners reversed the colors of the rest of the border. Kind of neat, huh?


Next finish. I used the leftovers from the quilt that I made for one of my sisters-in-law to make this baby quilt. Since that sister-in-law is about to become a grandmother again (and I a great-aunt again!), I am sending this quilt to my niece. She is due in March. I am positive that my sister-in-law said that the baby is a girl, but maybe I'd better verify that before I mail the quilt, huh?

 
 
These are a few of my favorite things (or at least my favorite fabrics)... At Stashbusters a year or two ago, we were given a pattern for a Brick Road quilt. Most of us made the quilt top, but I was the only one who hated mine. Everyone else's was beautiful! This was one of my first attempts at a scrap quilt. Unfortunately, I tend to get carried away when choosing fabrics. I used the fabric below to choose coordinating fabrics, but I chose about 20 too many and didn't stick to a recognizable color theme. I used the fabric below to chose all of my coordinating fabrics and colors.
 
 
I also used my absolute favorite fabrics. Just look at the some of the gorgeous fabics I chose for this quilt. All of my favorites are in here!









Below you can see how the inside of this quilt turned out. Ugh. There is no symmetry, no order, no unifying theme! I've had this top shoved into a corner out of sight since I made it. But thanks to Dogwood Guild's "Git 'er Done" challenge, I have until next Saturday to check off projects on my lengthy To Do list, and this was one. I had to finish it. I had to design a border to save my favorite fabrics from the dustbin.


In the photos below, you'll see why this large lap quilt is now one of my favorite quilts ever. I decided on a floating border to pull out the fabrics from the brick road and let them stand out on their own. I do need to correct a color flaw in the photos though. The border background is not black. It is actually a super dark purple with ultra small, slightly lighter purple squares. It's a gorgeous fabric, but it really doesn't photograph well in my lighting.

 
Doesn't it make a nice frame to calm down those internal colors and draw the eye to the outside? I didn't care in the slightest that the corners didn't quite match. The slight break doesn't seem to be a problem. Now I can love my favorite fabrics again -  they weren't wasted afte all. Don't you just love a happy ending?

 
Finally, I hope each of you had a terrific Christmas or other holiday season. We were able to visit, briefly, my sister and her family on Christmas Eve, but had to return home after just a couple of hours because of threatening weather. Living four hours away from each other makes visiting a little more difficult than I would like, but it was great to see everyone (except for her husband, who had to work that day). We'll catch him next time around when we don't have to leave quite so quickly.
 
I must say thank you to Maxie (my tuxedo kitty) who spent a great deal of time the two weeks before Christmas helping me wrap presents. Okay, so mostly she ate the wrapping paper and sharpened her claws on my brother's gift once I had it wrapped, but still, that was the most help I got with the wrapping!
 
Gratuitous kitty photos:  Sinbad (orange) and Tessie (tabby) enjoyed the space heater in my sewing room.
 


A little more reluctantly Sinbad shared his pad with Maxie. They never curl up together, but will sit side-by-side as long as they are facing opposite directions. Go figure.

Well, I still have more unfinished projects to tackle this week. For those of you who enjoy celebrating the New Year, please be careful and celebrate responsibly. I wouldn't want to lose any of you!

Until later,
Debbi

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