Oh my - updating my blog twice in one month, how did you get so lucky?? I've been so behind, but hopefully will get into a routine this year (what is a routine???).

Here is my latest project - a gorgeous wall hanging that I did a lot of free motion quilting on!!! I thought this turned out very well considering that I just learned how to free motion quilt!! All quilting except the straight lines was free motion quilting.


I found this project at our local quilt shop all made up and fell in love with it, bought the pattern and had an employee help me pick out coordinating colors for the blocks and the borders. She did a fabulous job - I'm so glad I asked for help!!

The borders are different colors - not much natural light today, so not a very bright picture, but the left and top borders are a maroon color and the right and bottom borders are a black paisley. This picture just doesn't do it justice, so you have to come over to see it!!!

One of these days, I'll get busy on the birthday quilts - in the meantime, I have another project or two that I'm working on AND I'm finishing (yea - finishing is so good!!) the Christmas table runner and the fall pumpkin table topper that I've posted about previously - they will have binding on them this weekend!!

But first - the vacuuming!!

Oh my!! I can't believe it's been so long since I've posted! Well, here is the final quilt that I made for the year. Not the final quilt that I was planning, but the final one I got done. Still have two more to finish for my birthday quilts project, but hey, I accomplished a lot this year and I would have gotten them done if I hadn't taken that class in the fall which took loads and loads of time - you can teach an old dog a new trick, but it takes quadruple the time and effort!!

Anyway - here it is!

This is William's birthday quilt, the one I promised to show you long ago. I did get it done for his birthday and it turned out beautiful. I planned to make it square - 11 blocks long and 11 blocks wide, but when I got to that point and thought I was done, I didn't like the way it looked, so back to the drawing board I went. I added a row of light blocks on the top and bottom, then discovered that I had just enough blocks (and just the right ones - thank you, LORD! :) to add another row to the top and bottom. I used every single piece of fabric that I had for this quilt - no blocks left over, not enough fabric to cut another single block - amazing and it turned out to be the perfect size for his twin bed!!

This is a rag style quilt - I do love to make them, but the ragging process takes about 4 hours to clip all the seams - wow!! For this rag quilt, I cut 7" blocks of the fabric and 5" blocks of "Warm and Natural" batting, stitched the usual X in the center of all the blocks that didn't have embroidery on them. I didn't want the embroidery to show on the back, so just embroidered on the top block, then sandwiched them together with batting and back block and quilted just a bit in from each corner to hold them together.

The center black diagonal blocks spell out his name, the other black blocks have words describing who William is. The last picture is the back of the quilt.

William loves it :)

What do you think???