October: A Lovely Year of Finishes Finish!!!

I finished the binding last night, but the dark, wind and rain did not encourage me to go outside for pictures, so my dear hubby helped me out this morning by holding the quilt against the wind that was trying to rip the quilt from his grasp!  I am linking up with Sew BitterSweet Designs with my Strip Challenge quilt, now known as Stairway to Heaven, finishing at 45x61.  I had so much fun quilting this quilt!  I love modern quilting and the way I can change what I am quilting whenever I feel like it!  Are you ready for some pictures???

The whole front...love the texture!!

A different design on each of the "stairs" - quite challenging to come up with something to fit the rectangles!

The butterfly.

The dragonfly surrounded by a zillion tiny feathers.

Filler.

Medallion - love playing with my rulers!!

Star.

Fun fillers.

The backing...since the quilt was 45" wide, a single width of fabric just wasn't wide enough, so I hit up my orphan block basket and pulled out extra blocks from 2 other quilts to add to the center of the backing - great way to use those orphan blocks and add some personality to the backings of quilts.

I just love participating in A Lovely Year of Finishes...the give me the accountability I apparently need to get a quilt finished every month!!  Okay, not a whole quilt every month, but to make progress on my projects every month.  When you quilt for customers, their quilts come first and your own stuff gets pushed to the back of the bus; by participating in ALYOF, I am forced to make some time to work on my own projects, or be a failure (in my own eyes) by not meeting my goal.  Do you need the extra accountability to get your things finished?  Oh, and you can win prizes too...BONUS!!!  I won a prize in September and got my choice of a pattern (a Stella Bag) from Clover and Violet.

What I am Working On

This is my challenge piece, both for my guild's retreat (leaving on Sunday) and for my October goal for A Lovely Year of Finishes.  I'm about 3/4 finished with the quilting.  The color on the pictures is weird and I'm not sure why - it really is white (third picture shows the true color) but I thought I'd give you a peek of the quilting.

 

With so much negative space, I've been having fun playing with lots of designs.  I did choose a different design for each of the color blocks but kept the design the same in the pinwheels.  Of course, it is always fun to try out designs and styles I have never tried before...like smaller feathers with lots of echoing on them.  Definitely will be a heavily quilted quilt!

Edit:  I am joining Jo and her Pre-Mystery UFO Challenge over at Jo's Country Junction

Holiday Gifts to Make

My friend Jenny from Australia is getting other bloggers to join her in sharing ideas of gifts we can make!  I am always up for making gifts rather than just buying them.  If you are interested in getting some great ideas, come on over and follow Jenny at http://www.elefantz.com and get some new-to-you (or is that me?) ideas from people just like us who want to give a gift from the heart!

My tutorial for this is found here.

A Lovely Year of Finishes - October Goal

This is a challenge quilt!  Last year at the quilting retreat for my guild (read about retreat here) we played a strip game - we didn't strip, we rolled dice to exchange strips with the ladies at our table!  One of the quilters had a great idea to challenge us to create a completed quilt using only the strips we won in the game by retreat this year...which starts on November 1!!  I was lucky that I had been collecting all the white strips during the game (thank you, table mates!) so creating a quilt with only the strips collected during the game was not too difficult.  Now to quilt it with some really cool modern quilting in the negative space!!!  No pattern, just winged it!!

I am linking up Sew BitterSweet Designs again this month!  If you are like me and have a hard time getting projects finished or you need a little extra incentive to get going/finishing a project and would like to have the opportunity to win some prizes, join up with us!  No one nags you, just a lovely carrot of getting projects done AND the possibility of winning a prize...and maybe a little extra blog traffic!!!  A win all the way around!!!  So come and join us in the fun!!!!!