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

Winter Staycation Update...

Quote for the Day:

“Sometimes it's important to work for that pot of gold. But other times it's essential to take time off and to make sure that your most important decision in the day simply consists of choosing which color

 to slide down on the rainbow.”

~Douglas Pagel

I have a list of things I want to get done while off of work this week.  So far I am WAAAYYYY behind!  

One of the things I want to get finished is my "Christmas Mountain Morning" quilt.  I pin-basted it Sunday, and Monday evening I started machine quilting it.  I spent more time on it today and now have it about 2/3's of the way finished.  

Look at this GORGEOUS thread I found to quilt it with!  It's actually embroidery thread and is rayon, but I'm using it anyway.  (The quilting police had better not try to stop at my house!)

It is a thinner thread than what most people use to machine quilt with, but since I'm not a very good machine quilter, I don't like my stitches to show up too much anyway!  :)

I can't wait to get it done and plan to put it on our bed immediately upon finishing the quilting and getting the binding on!  :)

Since it hurts my back to sit too long, I'm taking breaks from the sewing machine every so often and working on trimming up the flying geese for Clue 4 of the "Easy Street" mystery quilt.


Does anyone else find this commercial as funny as I do?



Okay...so much for this break...gonna go get back to quilting now....thanks for stopping by!  

Loretta

 

Updates From the Quilting Front...

Quote for the Day:

"Any day spent quilting is a good day!"

~author unknown

I've been spending a lot more time quilting ever since I attended the quilting retreat the first weekend of November.  I've been finding "snippets" of time here and there to get in a few minutes of sewing...like the last little time after I'm ready for work, but it's not time to leave yet, etc.  I've got a lot to show for the extra time spent quilting, too, so let's get started, shall we?

I was off of work today and since my car was in the shop getting a remote start installed, I spent the day in my sewing room working, and finishing, Clue 3 of Bonnie Hunter's "Easy Street" mystery!  Sixty-four shaded 4-patches!  I even ended up with an extra one...a "spare"!  LOL  I don't know how I count everything multiple times and I still end up with "extra".  

Here's the pieces that I've made so far doing the first 3 clues...

Between working on the steps of this mystery quilt, I've been working on finishing up the blocks to my "Smith Mountain Morning" quilt.  I have decided that I will name mine "Christmas Mountain Morning"!  

The blocks are all completed and arranged on my design wall.   Now they just need to be joined together to make the quilt top so I can add the borders and then machine quilt it!

I'm hoping I can have it made into a completed quilt by Christmas!  :)

Ginger gets very bored when I'm in the sewing room and not playing with her.  She's usually laying under my rolling chair and leaning into one of my legs (usually the leg I operate the foot pedal with, no less).   However, today she was so bored she went into our bedroom and drug her bed out into the landing and took a nap.  

At one point today when she and I were in my sewing room she got ahold of a quilt block and chewed on it without me knowing it.  After it dried out I ironed it to see if it was still useable.  It wasn't.  

Gives new meaning to the term "dog-eared"!  LOL  This poor block is completely shredded around the perimeter.  

Poor quilt block...it never stood a chance against Ginger!  :(

Loretta