The Winter Quilt

One of our traditions is that every year, I make a Holiday quilt.  Except this year. 

This year’s quilt was supposed to be a holiday quilt, but it turned out not to look very holiday-ish. 

And, that’s fine by me.  A winter quilt can be displayed longer than a holiday quilt. 

This quilt started out as a UFO that I bought from the guild boutique at a quilt show.  This year, I pulled it out, thinking I could make the holiday quilt out of it and decorate the trees as Christmas trees.  But, I’ve pretty much given up on that idea. 

First thing I had to do was remake all the blocks that I had bought in the UFO.  There was a reason it was a UFO.  And, most of what I thought were pieces to assemble more blocks had to be discarded because there were a couple pieces of this neutral and a few of that one, but not enough of any of them to match the neutrals in a block and I didn’t want to go more scrappy on the neutrals.  I didn’t care for part of the pattern, so instead of another row of green tree at the top of the block, I replaced that with an extra row of neutral.  That gave me some sashing around the blocks and separated the trees from one another.

My plan was to do the set in triangles out of neutral.

 

But, that did not make me happy, leaving me with a stack of neutral triangles because why would I check whether I liked it before I cut that yard of fabric up???  So, the day before Thanksgiving, I went on a bit of a shopping spree.  We had seen a darker fabric in JoAnn’s a few days before, but by the time I got there on Weds, it was all gone.  I bought something else that was fun. 

Then, I went to Hancock fabrics and found something else that was less fun, but would still work. 

And, then I went to my LQS and found the perfect green pine cone print, and that’s what I went with. 

I don’t quite know what inspired the borders.  I got this idea that I wanted a neutral strip around the outside and then a brown border because there are only three colors in the quilt; off-white, green, and brown.  The fabric I picked has a wood grain in the background and then all those medallions on it. 

Not sure I’m in love with the way the border looks, but I’m certainly not ashamed of it either.  And, yes, I did fussy-cut the borders, tossing strips away so I could get the perfect alignment of medallions and then, where I had to add a couple inches to get the length, I matched the medallions so you can’t see the seams.  Overall, it’s going to make a cute quilt…one day, when I get around to quilting it. 

Right now, it’s number 5 in a list of big projects that includes hand quilting the Dresden plate quilt and finishing a sweater I started 10 years ago and quilting a baby quilt and even more fun and exciting stuff that must be scheduled around basketball and holidays and work.

Sydney has an out of town game tonight.  We originally did not plan to attend the weeknight out of town games, but we’ve seen how low turn out is at all games, even the ones in our own gym,  and have changed our minds.  We didn’t go to one out of town game, because we had decided we weren’t going to.  And, all that evening, we regretted it because we could have made it.  But, we’re human and we can change our minds any time we want to, so now, instead of just the blanket statement that we won’t go to weeknight out of town games, our new decision is that we will go to any game we can, no matter where it is.  Better decision for us.  And, if we can’t make it, that is not a problem.  Life is like that.

Everybody have a great Tuesday. 

Rah-rah-ree, kick ‘em in the knee

Rah-rah-rass, kick ‘em in the other knee.

Lane