Final Finish

I snuck in one more completed quilt for 2013, finishing the binding on New Year's Eve. Even had time to wash it, but pictures had to wait for daylight today. This is another lap-sized one in solids, with lots of quilting.

The white around the red plus signs is first quilted in a diagonal square twice and then back and forth lines to fill in up to the red. Between those designs, there are doubled wavy lines and more back and forth filler.

The Copen blue body is mostly quilted in continuous watery, wavy lines, but I also threw in some places where I duplicated the quilting done around the red pluses. 

I finished 10 quilts in 2013, and gave away 15. (I had accumulated some in previous years.) Now it's time to set some goals for the coming year.

Carpenter's Star

I finished the binding on this a couple of weeks ago. It's a little bigger than the lap quilts I'm mostly working on, so still no good place to take its picture. However, we did have some good light early in the week, so I draped it over the frame to take this shot.

I quilted feathers in all the colored areas, and a mix of straight lines and fills in the background. It's one of my more heavily quilted pieces. 

Today it's gloomy and showery, not so great since I have roofers here. They've found several bad places where the plywood has to be replaced before the new shingles can be laid down. Hope it doesn't get too wet in the process!

Circus Baby Quilt

When I made a baby quilt for my neighbors the previous summer, I pulled a couple of different fabric combinations off the shelves. I made the more boyish version after finding out that's what they were expecting. Instead of putting the other fabrics back, I went ahead and pieced a second quilt. I didn't have an immediate need for another baby quilt, so I didn't quilt it until this fall and just finished it this week.

I quilted echoed leaves on one side (seems to becoming a favorite of mine), and a lacy, doily-like design on the other side. Each print rectangle is quilted with a different design; loops, wishbones, etc.

Sunshine and Shadow

An appropriate name for this clear blue day with long, long shadows from the low-hanging sun. I finished the binding on this quilt at the beginning of the week, then washed it to remove dog hair and stiffness from so much quilting. Now it's got soft little wrinkles and feels so soft.

This is lap-size. I wanted to combine some traditional patchwork with lots of space for quilting. Sort of my take on modern quilting.

Close up of the quilting in the teal body of the quilt. It's simple to do, but there is a LOT of it.

Quilting in the patchwork band.

This is number 7 for the year; how in the world am I going to match last year's total of 12 finishes? Well, I have two more quilted that just need to be bound, a third on the frame and a fourth pieced. Seems unlikely with only a little over 3 weeks left in the year, including Christmas, but I will make a push and see what I can do.

Hockey Strippy

It was a challenge finding fabrics to properly frame this really busy hockey print, but I think it works. I really, really need to find a better way or place to take photos though.

Finished mid-week, in time to wash and take to Door next week. And to link to Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish it up Friday. 

Chicago Brick

When I was making my City Harbor quilt, I liked the pattern so much that I followed it almost exactly, only changing the length and one color. But I still played around with some different color combinations, including a simple color inversion. That resulted in the blacks becoming whites, the brightest blues turning to orange and the darker blues turning to tans. I really liked it. It reminded me of an ice cream flavor we used to get sometimes when we were small, called Chicago or Chicago Brick. Remember when ice cream came in brick shapes, not cylinders or ovals (which disguise how the volume has shrunk while the price remained the same or went up)? Like Neapolitan, which came in stripes of strawberry, vanilla and chocolate, Chicago ice cream was made up of orange sherbet, vanilla and maple-flavored. The maple was like a lighter tan version of chocolate, and I remember being so disappointed that it didn't taste anything like chocolate. I guess that wouldn't have gone well with orange sherbet!

I quilted it with a modified, large scale swirl.

The back is pieced from some tiger and safari fabrics I'd had for quite some time. Finished the binding last night and linking to Finish It Up Friday.

Ocean Sunset

It's been awhile since I finished something. This was pieced back in February, for a short-lived design contest promoting Jane Sassaman's book. I quilted it in late May or early June, but just got around to the binding now.

Close-up of some of the stitching. I quilted spiky, flame-like shapes in the orange and yellow triangles radiating from the center, watery curves at right angles to those in the teal triangles, and a ferny border.

Linking to Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish it up Friday.

Volleyball Quilt

Something finished! I found some beach volleyball fabric somewhere, in two different scales, and made this simple little quilt. It's a small lap size. I used every bit of the larger scale fabric; in fact I sized it to make the most effective use of what I had. It could have been quilted in an all-over pattern, but I did a different design in each color. It still went quickly.

Not too hard to guess where this one will end up! Linking to Crazy Mom Quilts, for Finish it up Friday. 

September Light Finished

I keep thinking of this as my September Light quilt, even though many other fabrics were used. It was started using several fabrics from Lida Enche's first collection, September Light, but I wanted to stay in the color mood but be scrappier. I think it ended up about one-third September Light, two-thirds various other things from the stash.

I was quilting this in February, and had a lot of trouble with breaking thread. I tried every tweak I could think of, but doing these back and forth lines, the top thread would fray and break. After awhile I noticed that it only happened when quilting from right to left. I'd heard that was sometimes a problem, but I'd never experienced it before. I experimented with a row of figure eights, and then a row of swirls, and those gave no problems going right to left. 

So on the second half of the quilt I switched to doing only swirls. No more breaks! Thanks to Angela Walter's Craftsy class, I figured changing quilting designs part way through the quilt was acceptable.

Linking to Crazy Mom Quilts for finish it up Friday. 

Autumn Braid Finished

Finally, something of my own, completely finished in 2013. I started this several years ago, but didn't get borders on it until ?, maybe late 2010. Then I started quilting it, but wasn't happy with how the border quilting was turning out. I didn't do a good job of measuring the borders properly and they were really wavy. And the quilting I was doing wasn't doing a good job of controlling the extra fullness. I finished quilting the body of the quilt, but took it off the frame before doing the remaining borders.

That meant a lot of stitching to rip out, and I procrastinated on that for almost a year. Ultimately, I got around to it, and then put it back on the frame in January. I stitched the borders in a different design which sucked up some of the excess, and also added a little extra to the braids, making a ribbon effect. The borders still have some extra fullness, tucks and pleats, but it doesn't show (much), and the quilt is perfectly usable. And done!

Oh, and although I finished quilting this in January, I just got the binding on last week.

Linking to Crazy Mom Quilts, for finish it up Friday.