Up to Finish #12

I've been so crazy busy, I'm not actually sure whether or not I've shown the other nine finishes I've had this year, but I think so. I have three finishes to show today, four if you count a table runner, which I actually didn't count as a finish in my records. I'm not consistent in counting smaller projects.  

The first finish I'll show you was actually finished in October, but I needed to make a matching table runner, and I just finished that last week, plus I needed to mail it, but now that it's gifted, I can show all of it. 

I promised DD#1 a Thanksgiving/Christmas table runner. I make my table runners with a layer of Insulbrite plus a layer of cotton batting, so hot things can be placed directly on them. I've been in a bit of a time crunch, so I looked around the sewing room to see if I had any blocks lying around I could work into table runners. I found some autumn colored little blocks that would work for the Thanksgiving side of the table runner, but nothing already started that would work for Christmas. Around the same time I was evaluating that, it was National Sew a Jelly Roll day. I was busy, of course, on that day, but I decided I'd pick a jelly roll to work with and make a project the next week. I had one Christmas jelly roll, that wasn't overly Christmas-y. It had golds, reds and mostly greens, with metallic designs of holly and pinecones. A lot of the metallic designs were more just paisley type designs. Christmas colors, but more winter-ish in design. I knew DD#1 had just painted her living room green, and it would look great in there. 

I picked an easy pattern, and got the quilt top sewn up in just a couple days. It was finished in September. I've never made DD#1 a quilt with minky on the back, and I knew she'd like it, she's very tactile. She also likes fancier quilting, which minky shows off nicely. 

I freehanded a paisley feather design as an allover, and I really liked how the quilt came out. The method of piecing the quilt left me with bonus HST's, so I used those for the Christmas side of the table runner. I finished the quilting in late October. 

This is the Thanksgiving side. I needed a wider border on it, because I only had so many of the little blocks I had found. It's bigger than it looks in the photos, maybe 20x34 inches, I didn't measure. DD#1 is quite happy with her surprise Christmas quilt, and is thinking the table runner will work great for the holidays. Of course, now all the kids want throw quilts with minky backing, so I said that can be next year's Christmas presents. 

This is one of the giant quilts I basted in the last basting basting spree. It's about 104" square. I had enough blocks leftover from this, to make a throw quilt, for which I am piecing borders for today, and three extra blocks which will become a table runner. I used my Studio crazy quilt 10" block die to cut the blocks out. 

I spent most of the last week working on a baby quilt. The baby is due this month, it could already have arrived. I had the blocks I needed already cut out, because I had planned on making a larger quilt with those blocks. I only took the time to piece the 16 blocks I needed for the baby quilt, and I didn't count how many more blocks I have cut out. I'm already working on enough UFO's simultaneously, so until I get a few of those into quilt tops, I'm not going to add those to my workload right now. I also may need to cut more blocks to make the larger quilt I had planned, so it was really more than I wanted to tackle before Christmas. 

I finished the baby quilt yesterday, and I hope to mail it in the next few days. The baby is a boy with two older brothers. The oldest brother has a Star Wars quilt, the second brother has a Marvel quilt. Since I chose to use TV blocks, I could have put whatever I wanted on them. I did a couple Star Wars blocks, a couple Marvel blocks and the rest video games or cartoons. A nod to his brothers but still all his own. The Mod TV pattern is such a fun pattern, I could make a dozen different quilts from it and still have a blast choosing fabrics for the TV screens. If you are interested in improv quilting, but want some direction as well, this pattern would be a great intro to that. 

I started FMQ another of the giant quilts today. This one and one other I'd like to finish before Christmas. I'm sticking to my FMQ one hour per day, and it takes me anywhere from 1-3 weeks weeks to quilt a large quilt, depending on which design I'm quilting. On these I'm just doing easy stuff, so by Christmas is doable.  Other than that, it's all about Christmas projects and UFO's.