Holiday Quilts

Contrary to the post title, these are not Christmassy quilts, but rather ones given as gifts. In early November, in classic-late form, I decided that my boys needed new bed quilts. Since my daughter has been sewing, she has made herself 2 that fit her bed, on top of the one I made her 10 years ago. My boys have not had new quilts made in over 10 years. I can date it because I did not quilt either of them, and I have been long arming slightly over 10 years. 

The main goal was that they were easy enough that I would actually finish them, and suitable for an E2E quilting. There wasn't time for custom, besides I wanted a fleecy or minky backing which really doesn't need overquilting.

Here are the 2 patterns I came up with. They use many of the same fabrics, but the second also used lots of my scraps. These are my EQ renditions. 

My 17 yr old has a queen sized bed, so it did not call for microscopic piecing. When I shopped for the fabric, I did not envision the orange/red taking over the quilt as much as it did, but that is life. I should have used more greenish greens rather than the yellowy green.

 It's quilted in a black thread, and has black fleece I bought back last winter for a whopping $1 a yard! My hope was that the black Omni thread would taint the quilt darker.

 His walls are a nice peacock blue, which does match one of the blue stripes in the quilt. In hindsight, I should have used more blue shades I think.

The other quilt is only for a twin bed, thankfully! I have done this pattern previously. It is a tad finicky because it requires partial seams for each block, but these blocks piece quickly. The gray matches his curtains, and the pale blue is the color of the walls.

 Initially I really wanted to use that 6-sided star pantograph, but the thread broke early in on my first pass, and I realized how hard the straight lines were to do well when they show as much as they do on the solid fabric. I quickly ripped it out and switched to the curves. This Orange Peel pattern quilts up fast and looks good. The back is a lush silver minky.

Both quilts were bound on the machine. It's far from my forte, but considerably faster than doing it by hand. With black binding fabric, all the wobbles barely show anyway.

 Here's the back...

 And, another happy customer.

And one last E2E from December (same pattern as the first quilt shown). This is a top my mom made for somebody. It also has a soft fleece backing which shows off the pattern nicely.

I just finished a gorgeous Sue Garman Ruffled Roses that I will share next post. I'm about to start my own personal show quilt, so I may not have pics of a client quilt for a few weeks. Have a great end to 2019-