One Last Christmas Quilt Gift

Here is the finished queen sized bed quilt made from Moda's Simplicity charm squares. I gave this to my in-laws for Christmas. I can't say with certainty that she/they love it, but at least I feel good about giving something that is nice.

I gave it a test-run on my bed to see how it fit. My bed is high-posted, so it looks as though the quilt is not long enough on the sides. On a normal bed, it is plenty long.

Here's a closeup of the quilting in the squares...

I knew before it was sent to be quilted that I wanted the scalloped binding. Boy, this was a mistake!! What a big job it was to get all of those inside points hand stitched down well. I'll think twice before doing this type border again :-)

The bobbin thread is a pale yellow. The quilting shows up very nicely from the back. Gotta say it, I hate all those stupid swirls in the sashings. i had no idea there would be so many of them. It is just another difficulty of machine quilting. If I used my local quilter, I could preview what she does. If I use another one somewhere else, I just kind of have to go with her judgement. I also wish that the rose boxes had been outline stitched, but she didn't really want to do this without adding more cost. I can't really complain, the quilting looks fantastic.The machine quilting was done by Carla Riggs, mother of Ginger (aka Paisley & Polkadots). I was somewhat disallusioned with the lack of creativity of the machine quilter I have used that is local to me, so Ginger recommended her mother. She's a blessing, as she also recommended the Amish quilters that hand quilted my mother's quilt.

After receiving the finished quilt on December 1st, I decided I'd make coordinating pillow shams. These were fairly simple (after ordering another charm pack!), and I got to practice my machine quilting. I think that what I did matched the quilt really well.