It's DONE! The King Chevron quilt is done! As are 3 european-sized pillow shams that I made to go with the quilt.  This project has been on my "to do" list for the Finish-A-Long for 2 quarters and I'm happy to say it is done. (Can you tell?)

This was a commissioned quilt and it was requested that I made a chevron quilt that didn't have any yellow, didn't use any flowery or childish prints, included turquoise & gray, and matched an accent wall in the bedroom where it will live (hence the mushroom background color).  The customer also requested random pops of orange.

The finished quilt came in at 110" x 110" prior to a final washing and is by far the biggest quilt I've ever made. It is comprised of 324 six-inch half-square triangles. The backing fabric is Kona Mushroom and there are around 36 gray, lt. blue, dark blue, turquoise, purple and orange prints used from too many collections to name. Most of the prints were tone-on-tone or white-on-tone.

I don't have a great shot of the finished quilt backing, but I included rejected blocks from the quilt top and arranged them in to pinwheels - or windmills. The quilt is headed to the house of a farmer, so I thought that would be appropriate.  I opted to quilt vertical lines through the points of the chevrons. I wanted to break up the strong horizontal lines from the pieced pattern in the quilt top, but not add too much to a quilt top that was already very bold.

I bound the quilt in multicolored scraps from the quilt top.

When it came time to make the coordinating euro shams, I struggled to come up with a design that wouldn't clash with the chevrons but would still stand out. I decided to do color-blocked circles. I backed the pillows in an ikat polka dot home decor weight cotton/linen blend from Premier Prints.

The King Chevron quilt counts as my second finish for Q4 in the Finish-A-Long!  Two projects down, 2 to go.

A few days ago I posted the mini-quilt that I made for the Modern Quilting FB mini-quilt swap. And today I get to post the one I received!

But let's back up just one minute.  For the past few weeks I've been working on sorting out my orange fabrics and little bits of black and white. I finally got them all pre-washed and ironed: I wanted to make myself a Halloween table topper. However, I was beginning to be stressed by how quickly Halloween was actually approaching.  Then this morning, in an effort to simplify my life, I decided that I would be OK going another year with out a Halloween table topper on my dining room table.  So I put away the stack of my orange fabrics and decided to start finishing projects that really did need to get done.

And then I went to check my mail.  (Note - I usually check my mail at night. But the mail came late last night, so I didn't check it until this morning.)

In my mail box was a package: my mini-quilt from the swap!  On my swap questionnaire, I had listed several holidays that were important to me, but lo-and-behold, my partner had decided to make me...A Halloween Table Topper!  I was so excited and touched. And I immediately placed it on my table.

I'm currently chuckling at how the world can work in mysterious ways. I was a little bummed to put away my Halloween fabrics this morning. But I ended up with a great Halloween table topper in the end!

I'm part of the Modern Quilting group on Facebook, and joined in on a "Holiday Mini Quilt Swap" that they organized. Each person who wanted to be a part of the swap answered a questionnaire about what was their favorite holiday and what kinds and colors of quilts & fabric they like.  Then the moderators of the swap blindly assigned participants and we made them a mini-quilt! I had never made a mini-quilt before, but it sounded like fun.

I was assigned to make a quilt for a lady who loves Christmas, so I decided to use my new Flying Geese Bloc-loc ruler. Flying Geese...Christmas trees...you can decide what the squares look like to you.  Regardless, I had fun using up fabric scraps from my gift bags. For those of you who have seen my bags, do you see any fabrics that you recognize?

I didn't want to add a whole lot of quilting to such a small quilt, and I didn't want to take away from the simplicity of the design, so I opted to just stitch in the ditch around each tree/goose.

I designed this mini-quilt to be able to be used as a small table runner, or hang on a wall.  I'd never made anything to hang, but had seen this tutorial by Lori Holt of Bee in My Bonnet. So I added hanging pockets to the back of the mini-quilt before I sewed on the binding.  Below you can see the mini-quilt hanging on the arm of my rocking chair. I simply stuck a pencil in the hanging pockets and hooked the pencil on the arm of the chair!

Specifics:
Many of the fabrics used in this quilt were from Connecting Threads holiday collections from years past.  As I said earlier, all of the fabric was in my scrap pile, so I don't have the name or collection for all of the fabrics.  I do know that I used Kona Ash for the background, bound the quilt in Kona Choarcoal, and backed it in fabric from last year's Cherry Christmas collection (Aneela Hoey).

Each block is 2" x 4" and overall the quit measures 8.5" wide x 16.5" tall.

The mailing deadline is here, so I'm sending this little project off. I really hope my partner likes it! Oh - and this was part of my Q4 Finish-A-Long. So I can already mark one quilt project off my list!

Time to look at what I'd like to get done in the last quarter of 2013.  There are many projects that I'd like to have completed, but with the holidays approaching, I'm trying to be realistic about how much time I will actually have to sew. I decided I'd be a little bit conservative - so I can hopefully feel good about getting lots of things on my list done come the end of December.

First on the list is a holiday mini-quilt for an exchange that is being hosted on the Modern Quilting Facebook page. This is my first exchange and I have to say I'm a little nervous about sending my projects to another quilter. I feel like it has to be perfect!  The person who is assigned to receive my mini-quilt selected Christmas as her holiday of choice (you had to choose a holiday to be the theme of the mini quilt).  I opted to try out my new flying geese bloc-loc templates (rulers?) - and they were so fun and easy to use! All I have left to do on this project is finish the binding.

Next on the list has to be the King Chevron quilt (again). I'm sooooo close.
Quilt top - check
Backing fabric - check 
Binding made - check
Batting in hand - check! 

Now all I have to do is put it all together.  My personal goal is to have it done and off to the customer by the end of October.

Third on the list is my Modern Trees QAL with Christa Quilts.  The blocks are done (officially done - since I've run out of the white backing fabric), and are up on the design wall. Sorry about the horrible picture - but the lighting in my sewing room isn't great for photos).  I chose to "slash" my trees to make garlands and like the result. I also chose to alter the pattern a little to make more white space around the trees. Now I have to assemble the squares, add sashing (?), maybe a border, layer it...and I think I'm going to treat myself and have this one quilted by a professional long-arm quilter! This quilt is for ME. So I think I'll give myself a break and let someone else do some fun and fancy quilting on this.

Last up on the list is my Texty St Louis 16-Patch. This was a spur-of-the moment project that I whipped up in a weekend or so. It was a lot of fun. Now it just needs to be layered, quilted and bound.