christmas in february?

back in early december i got the hankerin' for a large, cuddly, christmas quilt to snuggle my family in. i set to work immediately... and then the christmas crazies stepped in and life got busy with shopping, decorating, wrapping, baking and eating, eating, eating. and the quilt got pushed on the back burner. i had the vision of an allover, scrappy, postage stamp quilt like this one. but after fiddling around with fabric placement i realized that i just had to have some organization. to me, it looks cleaner and more striking. so i cut a few more tiny 2.5 inch squares and sewed that thing up. which kinda took forever. and then i realized something else...this was meant to be a wall hanging. it could've been that i just didn't want to cut one more square and it could've been that i'm just pretty dang impatient but overall i just really liked it the way it was and just couldn't imagine adding more squares and possibly messing up the good thing i had going. 

so the project that was meant to be a quilt for 2012 is now a wall hanging for christmas 2013. it's just the way it is. i still need to quilt and bind this cute little guy but i seriously love it and can't wait to hang it above my mantle in... oh... ten months. (and please excuse the terrible lighting/photo quality in these photos. i'm still trying to figure out ISO and all that jazz and i'd go outside but it's just too dang cold! i know you understand.)

oh and this is how jake feels about my quilting obsessions. :)

kaleidoscope

The kaleidoscope quilt took more than eight months to complete. It was my wedding gift to my sister and her new husband. Though it felt like it took forever to finish, I loved every minute because I love my sister. 

Majority of fabrics are from Henry Glass

Tutorial by Film in the Fridge.

The piecing was simple but time-consuming since it is a paper-pieced method. But it was so gratifying to see the blocks come together to make the diamond pattern all over the quilt. I might end up making one for myself.....once I've forgotten the time commitment that this quilt required. 

I free motion quilted for the first time, using an all-over larger stippling pattern. There is definitely a learning curve and my shoulders were most definitely in pain by the end of it. I quilted it over a three-day period which isn't bad but anything larger than a throw size will be going to a long-arm quilter here on out!

Since the whole quilt has a scrappy look, I made the binding scrappy as well. Though it takes longer, the end result was so cute and well worth it. That was my favorite part: sitting on the couch, watching Downton Abbey and hand sewing the binding down. So much more relaxing than hunched over the sewing machine. 

And so, with all that work, you'd think I'd take a good decent picture of the quilt right? Wrong. I was pretty much sewing up to the day before we left for California and so an awesome full length shot of the quilt was put on the back burner and then forgotten about. But the quilt got lots of love before it was sent to live with Brittany and Cardon.

the block stack

putting the blocks together

 attaching the binding!

quilt cuddles

 *And I'd like to thank Sesame Street. Without it, I never would have found time to quilt sans Jacob.

C+B Wedding Quilt

since quilting is my new found passion...and since my sister brittany decided to get married(!) i vowed to myself i would make her a wedding quilt that she and cardon could snuggle up in. plus, i'm loving handmade things these days. so nostalgic and sweet. brittany chose a {string quilt} pattern. which is totally cool...and totally time consuming. the method is fast but it takes four quilt blocks to complete/create just one mega quilt block/shape. but i love her. so i trek onward. plus, who am i kidding? i secretly love it. ha!

//majority of fabric from Genevieve by Amy Hamberlin//