Triumph Star

I was compelled to finish up this quilt top before working on anything else... I love how it turned out! Even though it started out as a "mistake" and went through a couple uncomfortable patches as it grew, it's lovely and finished: a triumph.

I really had to tear myself away from using red with my made fabric- it did sneak in there in a few places, but I am really happy with the combination of yellow, orange and pink with blue.

At just under 36" square, I am counting this as a mini quilt and looking forward to machine quilting it to try boost my skillz.

Bloom

I finished quilting and binding this little mini quilt over the weekend. I am really excited because it's the first free motion quilting I've done that turned out relatively decent and frustration free. Yes, I've been getting up the gumption for at least a year to give FMQ another try, and I finally did it!

This little quilt started out as a 15 minute play scrap block, that morphed into a flower and needed a cheery orange garden setting.

I tried echo quilting around the flower...

Stippling in the background...

Loops in the "grass"...

Adding veins to the leaves....

My free-motion quilting has a long way to go, but I figure one day I'll look back on this project and appreciate the journey. Mostly, I'd like to improve my stitch length evenness and figure out how to keep the thread tension balanced. My machine is pretty basic (I am kind of surprised I can drop the feed dogs actually) so I have a feeling that a proper quilting machine would make the job easier, but that's not in the budget for me for a while.

In any case, this is now a happy little birthday gift for a very special person who admired this piece on my blog. A lovely winter bloom!

Let's Call Them Epiphany Quilts

My first finished quilts of this year are here! Yes, I started them in December for Christmas, but my machine got really cranky about the zig zag topstitching. I learned that when topstitching through the edge of a pillowcase turned quilt, only a heavy duty needle will do the job.

But now I can enjoy being ahead of the game for next Christmas... or a few days early for Epiphany! Complete with a shining star to top the tree.

The Spirit of Un-finished Christmas Presents Past

I had big plans for this little mini quilt to be a much bigger Christmas throw... it was either last year or the year before.

Then Anita's recent post about starting Christmas quilts in December... and not finishing them... motivated me to dig through my bags of unfinished projects and turn my interrupted Christmas quilt into something festive and, best of all, finished for this year.

Right after I assembled this little rectangle, my mom called to ask if I had any Christmas decor for her dining table.

Well, voila! Just in time to decorate for the houseguests she has coming this weekend. Because, you know, she's my mom and she says she likes to brag about her daughter is an artist. Hmmm. This spirit of giving is making me feel very merry indeed!

Holiday Sewing

The holidays are here! I've been quietly but busily stitching away at some mini quilts. I adore these cute little trees!


Once I finish these pieces, I have gifts to make for my daughters' teachers and a few lucky family members.

If there's any time left in December after that, I'll try to finish up as many quilts in progress as I can! I do have a Christmas quilt planned, but it will probably have to wait until next year. No matter- another year filled with more quilts is a happy prospect!