Well, that was a long break, wasn't it?! Since I started using my phone to take pictures, I've been having trouble getting them to load the correct way into Blogger. I finally found a way to turn them around, so now I need to get caught up with my blog pictures. And now they even have a watermark. This was a painful learning curve.
I haven't been idle during this break, and have finished several quilts during this long cold spell we've had for two months now! We haven't been getting the snow that lots of places have this winter, but we've had more than enough cold to make up for it.
The first finish of January was Pork A Dot Pigs.
This was a fun quilt to make. (I always say that, don't I?) The ears and tails on the pigs are loose,
and all the pigs are machine quilted in a different pattern. I tried to match the quilting pattern to the design on the background - you can see it in this pink pig. It has circles to match the black and white background.
The pattern called for pinwheels for the borders, but I thought that would be too much trouble, so I did string pieced blocks instead. That probably took ten times as long, but it was more fun! I like the look of the string pieced blocks, and string piecing is really relaxing when you don't want to think too hard.
I had a lot of help with this quilt, as usual. Why is it that the minute you lay a quilt on the floor, the cat appears and has to roll all over it? She usually keeps me company in the sewing room, but she generally stays up in her basket of wool, until I lay something on the floor.
The second finish of January was this Kim Diehl pattern called High Cotton. I'd wanted to make this quilt since the book came out a few years ago, so it's finally done. This is a double-bed size quilt.
This quilt is really two-for-one. I didn't have anything I wanted to use for the back, so I used a lot of leftovers from previous projects and pieced them all together to make a back for the quilt. I had several strips, lots of fat quarters and 10" squares, and some leftover blocks from a couple projects. I was a pattern tester for Quiltmaker for a couple issues of their 100 blocks magazines, so there is a whole strip of 12" blocks that I made for that. They were great blocks, but only one of each to test the pattern, so I sewed a bunch of them together and at least they got used in something. I kind of like this back, even though it has an everything-but-the-kitchen sink look to it!
And last but not least, I can finally show you this project that I got back from the framer a couple months ago. This was a kit purchased at Primitive Gatherings. This will go onto my sewing room wall.
Hopefully, it won't take two months before I'm back to show you the February finishes!
