It's FINISHED!!!

Quote for the Day:

"To quilt is human, to finish divine."

You cannot even imagine how excited I am to be able to share this finish with you!!!  

Presenting..."Christmas Mountain Morning"!!!

It is finished and ON OUR BED just in time for Christmas!  Do you realize how happy this makes me???  First of all, I don't make very many quilts for me/us.  Most of my quilts are gifts for other people.  Secondly, I started this quilt the first weekend of November.  To have it become a COMPLETED quilt (all 1568 pieces of it...not counting borders) by Christmas is ASTOUNDING for me.  It usually takes that  long for me to just make the top!  And since I usually hand quilt my quilts...add another 4-9 months onto that time before it is done!  

However, since I machine quilted this one, it shortened that 4-9 months of quilting down to about 1 week!  Even though the machine quilting makes this quilt a little more "stiff" to the touch, the benefit of having it done sooner is a good trade off.  (I haven't washed it, yet, so it will soften up a little after that, too, but I'm going to wait till after New Years to take it off my bed and wash it.)

In this picture, you can see that it isn't as wide and doesn't hang down quite as much as I usually like for our queen-sized bed, but I'm okay with that...

You can see where the Christmas quilt ends and the bargello quilt hangs down below it.  This is also a good shot of the borders and scrappy binding!  :)   (We don't use blankets in our house anymore...we just layer quilts depending on how cold it is/isn't.)

Here's a close-up of the all-over meandering quilting and of the variegated rayon thread I used.  Since it is rayon, it really reflects the flash from the camera and looks "shimmery".

Machine quilting is definitely NOT my forte, but I'm happy with the way it turned out!  I can truthfully say that each time that I do machine quilting, I get a little better and a little more comfortable with it.  It doesn't have to be PERFECT... DONE is good enough!  :)

And here you can see the pieced backing and a little more of the scrappy binding that I used.  I got to use up some of the Christmas fabric in my stash...especially some of the "what was I thinking" fabric!!

Another GREAT Christmas song for you enjoyment and contemplation...






Loretta