Blue and Silver Christmas Round Robin

I'm keeping up my momentum and working away at my rather impressive pile of UFO's. Today I finished this one, it's a round robin quilt I started with a group of friends years ago.  I've been dragging it out and working on it in bits, but finally have it finished!  It's got a nice array of quilting on it - and I am quite pleased with myself. 

If you have never participated in a round robin, I would highly recommend it!  For this one there were only four of us and we were all making Christmas quilts.  We didn't have any rules for the different rounds, just do what you like.  Each of us had an ideal finished size as the only guideline.  I did the beginning feathered star on mine.  My colors were blue, white, silver, with just a bit of red.  I added the last border after a lot of searching for the right fabric.  It's a pretty piece with a village scene and trees.  I had to cut all my borders just right so everything would be right side up - I don't often make quilts with an up and down so it was a bit tricky!  I did feather quilting on the star.  You really can't see it at all in the blue because of the matching thread, but the white shows up pretty well.  It's not perfect, but it was good practice!

 

All the borders are really special!  The first border looks like prairie points, but all those triangles are appliqued!  I just quilted that border stitch in the ditch.  The next border has the same dark blue as the triangles in my star.  I had a hard time finding thread to go with the red, but eventually settled on a shiny Sulky rayon thread.  Then I didn't know how to quilt the blue squares.  I thought I would try some free from snowflakes in silver thread.  Worked great!  They actually look more like bows on packages, but I like it.

The white border with squares was fun (and challenging) to quilt.  I was going for a "frost" kind of inspiration.  I was really pleased with the results!

The final border is just done with swirls because it doesn't really show.  The binding worked out nicely.  It was a blue batik with swirls of white dots.  I think they look kind of like snow!  Isn't the fabric pretty?
Excuse my darkish pictures.  I didn't finish until after 6 and I lost the good light!  But I did want to get pictures.  I'll try for some better ones later this week.  I was just excited to get this done and wanted to post it!

I've got several custom orders to work on next week, but do have one more quilt that is basted and partly quilted to finish up.  Yay for productive weekends!

Winter Solstice Quilt Finished

Despite a night of little sleep (poor DH was not feeling so well!) I got myself together this afternoon and finished quilting up my shop sample of Winter Solstice.  I'm pretty happy with it - I was trying out some different quilting designs, so there was a bit of a learning curve and some ripping out.  In the end it came out and I will be using it in my Beginner Free Motion Quilting class to show some things you can do with basic meandering, loops and spirals.

 I suspect that it was a mistake to quilt the background first.  I had a few issues with extra fullness in some spots and I think I might have avoided that by quilting the other sections first.

Love doing those loop the loops to fill the triangles - I only got mixed up in the direction I was going one time :)

 Not the best example of my free form feathering, but overall they look really good!  They don't have to be perfect because they are all unique and handmade!

And a peek at the back.  I love the look of all the different quilting designs on the back.  This is going to be awesome when it gets washed, I just love all the crinkly goodness of a washed quilt, do you?  The next quilt up for finishing is my Christmas round robin that will go on my futon this year for the holidays!  I got out the burgundy thread and even did a few stitches while dinner was cooking.  I am really ready to cross this one off my list, and  I'm getting through the list pretty fast. Then it'll be time to start a new one.  List, that is.  There are plenty of quilt tops, and UFO's around here for several!

A little quilting...

I got to do a little quilting today...I got all the white background done.  Tomorrow I'll work on the colors!  It will be a fun Christmas quilt when it's finished.  This is another project from Angles With Ease.  Sorry for the pathetic photo.  It looked a lot better on my phone :/

 I think my husband is catching that bug that's been dragging me down all week, so it'll be a good day to take it easy and do some stitching :)  I feel bad that he doesn't feel well, though.  Should have kept my germs to myself!