Blue HST finish

     And now for another installment of....I finally took pictures of a finished quilt from last month.  The Blue HST quilt was finished a few days after the new year.  I think I last posted pictures before it was basted but wrote about it after it was basted.  

      A not so happy quilt holder did not work today and managed to survive standing for a few minutes on his swollen ankle to let me get some pictures.  Originally I thought of donating this to the elementary school auction, but I like it too much.  I love that it was put together pretty randomly and I still love how it looks.  It should not have taken me two years to put it together.  Oops.

      And in no way am I trying to gloat about our weather.  I wish it were a little bit colder, although not as cold as everywhere else.  I'm just concerned about the lack of snow pack and the water supply for the summer months.  The local mountains should be snow covered right now, not bare.  Snow covered mountains are good.  No snow pack is bad.....But I am doing a fairly good job of starting to weed the yard and clean it up and mowing the lawn. And I survived outside today wearing a light fleece and shorts although not for an extended period of time.

      The blues are a wide selection of random solids.  Kona, Art Gallery, and quite a few Free Spirit solids from when Fat Quarter Shop cleared out their inventory a few years ago.  

      Here is the quilt through the lens of the 4 year old photographer.  His stated goal was to focus on the bottom of the quilt, blurry fingers, and close ups of the quilting.  Maybe not so much.

     I pieced the leftover HST into the backing.  Dark flannel backing is not the best idea I've discovered.  Too many things cling to it like that thread in the lower left.  Lesson learned.  This ended up about 64 x 72.  It is just a touch short for my liking and I keep pulling it off my toes when I try to use it.  But I still like it very much and plan to keep it.

     I still have one more finished quilt to blog, one quilt top, one quilt that needs binding (and a charged battery in the camera to allow for uploading of pictures) and a few other random projects.  I'll get to them soon...

Freebird Stars

     Soon after returning from winter break, it was abundantly clear that a co-worker needed a bit of extra assurance that she had a large group of us who cared.  This work in progress at the time quickly became a quilt for her.

      Way back in 2010, I really liked Freebird by MoMo and bought a complete fat quarter bundle.  Then it sat in my stash untouched but with the intention of becoming quite a few patterns.  Last year, I used up the large scale prints on 2 St. Louis 16 patch quilts.  My intention was to use the small scale prints for Jaybird's Firecracker pattern.  When I re-read the directions, I changed my mind.

     Instead, I used Julie's White Stars pattern (I'm not sure if that is the real name) from her book.  I devised my own measurements to use nearly all of the fat quarter and make a 60 x 80 quilt.  If I were to make this again, I probably would use some other fabric instead of just white for the stars, but I still like it.

     Quilt holder is working overtime on weekends so good pictures are harder to come by.  This also has been finished and gifted for over a month so daylight definitely was a bit of an issue.  Constant rain was also a problem at the time.
     As I wanted this done quickly to give it to her as soon as possible, I quilted it with a meandering stitch all over.  It is bound in the purple eggs print from the line.  I did not have enough of the brown eggs to make it all the way around, but I did have enough purple.

     To continue the theme of caring and support, I used one of the heart flannels from Pretty Potent as well as a flannel scrap that was nearly perfect to fit the backing.  The white patch at the bottom has signatures from many of her friends from work with a line modified from Llama, Llama, Red Pajama,   "We're always near, even if we're not right here."

     It is gifted and she appreciated it.  Hopefully it will help her remember that there are a lot of people thinking about her.