First Finish of 2014

Last Saturday, my sister and I went to Target and saw all the Valentine's Day decorations. I immediately wanted to make a pink sparkly quilt, so I went home and made one. I used fabric from Tailored by Annette Tatum mixed with several pink and aqua bits I had under the bed.

I backed it with pink penguin flannel and quilted it with hearts and wavy lines. It's fun and cozy.

I stopped at the library to take pictures of the quilt yesterday and finally got pictures of my Christmas quilt and Katie's 12 Days quilt.

Sunnyside Cookies

Yesterday was my sister's birthday so I had to send cookies! (of course). She and I are both fans of fabric designer Kate Spain, especially Sunnyside (and all the Christmas collections!). She sent me Sunnyside fabric for Christmas, so I made matching cookies for her birthday.

2013 Quilts

If you just looked at the blog, you might think I didn't finish many quilts this year, but you would be wrong. Turns out I wasn't good a documenting quilts as I finished them. Here are a few, there are a couple more I don't have pictures of yet, but that's a goal for the new year: document my quilts (also, put labels on the backs)

The next quilt I started was made using this pattern by Camille Roskelley. The quilt isn't finished (a project for 2014!) mostly because it's massive. The matching pillows are finished with straight line and pebble quilting. I decided to try free-motion quilting last year, and will continue to work on that this year. So far these pebbles are the only project I've free-motion quilted.

There are two of the 14" Lucky Pillows with straight-line quilting

but only one 16" Lucky pillow with pebble quilting

 My next project was a Christmas quilt for my sister. I might have to call 2013 the year of the Christmas Quilt, since I finished three and started two more!

Katie's Christmas quilt featured a panel from an older Kate Spain Christmas collection. The majority of the blocks were a paper-pieced block called Arabic Lattice. This was a really fun block to piece. To make the quilt easier on the eyes I put borders on all the blocks. The back is the red floral print and is bound with a white-on-white swiss dot.

This is the blocks laid out to assemble the top

Next I finished a project I'd started a few years ago, one of the first quilts I started, and the only one to sit in pieces in a box while I worked on other quilts. The original blocks were poorly done, with uneven seams, poorly sewn bias seams, etc. It was overly ambitious for my skill level at the time, but with a lot more practice and even more study I decided it was time to take them out of the box and have another look. I ended up cutting them into triangles and re-assembling them. One I put the new blocks together I liked it.

I quilted with diagonal lines of various widths.

It moved to my mother's house at Christmas, and her furry friends seem to like it alright.

My next quilt finish is not my usual style (very little white!) but is a very happy quilt. The fabrics are Riley Blake and were provided to me by the Modern Quilt Guild for the MQG Riley Blake Challenge. The challenge rules allowed the addition of more Riley Blake prints or solids from any source. I added a second fat eighth of each of the challenge prints as well as Kona White and Michael Miller Orange. I backed the quilt with really fun fabric from Technicolor by Emily Herrick for Michael Miller (not challenge approved, but I went looking for fabric for the back and sashing after I had cut the tumblers, so I couldn't not pick it! 

I quilted it with circles I traced from dishes and candles. I stitched over the lines using my walking foot. It's the happiest quilt and I think it might be my most favorite quilt ever (so far) I finished it Thanksgiving weekend.

As soon as the happy quilt was done I pulled out some red and white fabrics I'd had for a while to make another Christmas quilt. I don't have pictures of it, but I did finish matching pillows as well. It's a standard star block made with squares and half-square triangles. 

I finished it about a week before I left for California for Christmas with my family.