2014 Comes to an End

With just one more day to this year, I am looking at all of the great accomplishments of this year and pondering what goals are realistic to set for 2015.  It seems ridiculous to even speculate that 2015 could be anywhere as successful on the show quilt front as this past year.  I still cannot fathom how well many of my quilts did, and how many high awards they brought home.  Afterall, I just had my 5 year anniversary of getting my longarm in October.  It has been a fantastic year at the shows -- My family is going to Europe next summer for 2 weeks; it was THAT good.  The business did well.  No complaints.  Well, not about lack of work anyways.  I guess if there is one thing to want more of in 2015 it is time.  I have too many pans in the fire and just wish to get some things finished.  But then, who doesn't?

Since I haven't quilted in 10 days, and won't for this week, I went thru pics to see what quilts I might not have posted during the year.  I actually have 5 quilts done during the summer for a friend's book that will come out next year, but naturally, you have to wait until next fall to see them.  Bummer! 

But here's a few...

This is a Neimeyer compas quilt...lotsa ditching, and fun, pretty feathers.

 Closeup...I love the curling feathers.

 This little bird quilt was done in the spring or summer, but definitely looks Christmassy.

 Again, lots of feathers and fillers that are fun to quilt.

 This was a sampler quilt that was the client's first quilt... Very nicely pieced!

 Here's a feather quilt with WAY too much white background :-)  Sorry but I can't remember who's pattern this is.  The more modern quilts with an overabundance of background can be scary.  It turned out well though.

Here's a baby quilt, a bit blurry.

It is sweet.  I always love getting baby quilts because they don't require huge amounts of time, regardless how custom they are.

 This was amazingly large...one of 3 Civil War repro quilts that the quilter sent!  I did the clamshells with a Handi Quilter clamshell template.  It gives a representative style quilting for this reproduction.

Here's another very cute baby quilt.  I did a number of these about the time I went to Houston.  I came back from that trip in a black hole and haven't gotten back to things I was doing prior to leaving!  I did intend to take another picture before mailing this home, but never did it.

 It's quilted cutely...I added things into the outer border like a bone and ball and bird.

The fill of each block is slightly different too.  This cat is my favorite...always have had a thing for  orange kitties.

A Christmas wall-hanging...

The owner had several embellishments for the tree and stars, and requested minimal quilting. Minimal doesnt always happen with me, but this is lightly custom quilted.

 The red corners were done with half of a stencil.  It is a nice look, and I wanted to give this a try.

For the past couple weeks, in addition to entertaining kids and all the holiday stuff, I have been binding my small green silk quilt.  It is getting some bling too.  I am also picking out icky things on my hexie silk quilt so it can go onto the frame to be finished next week.  Today, with my boys away at Nana's for 2 days, I loaded my daughter's quilt.  She machine pieced all of this.  All I did was attach the long outer border for her.  It was initially intended for VQF, but after it was nearly done, we learned it exceeded their max size of 40" sq.  In past years there were not size restrictions.  This kind of sucks, but she's doing the quilting so it can be entered at MQX in April.  Another smaller piece will be made for VQF, maybe.  There's 5 weeks to get that pan into my fire.

She's posing with her quilt and my box of Handi Quilter chocolate, an annual goodie they send me.

Have a great New Year, and come visit in 2015.