January Finish

A first finish for the new year,  completed on the young recipient's birthday, though we won't be seeing them for another couple weeks.  Made up of giant hexies - a first (and last) for this quilter as hexies have always been my least favorite quilt pattern.  This pattern looked doable and fairly quick, as it was made up of 2 1/2 inch strips and I had a jelly roll with some coordinating fabrics languishing in the stash.

In retrospect, the jelly roll was made up of many colors and mostly tiny prints that read almost as a solid from a distance while the pattern quilt used only two colorways and large prints which would probably have been a better choice.  Still, this quilt is bright and cheerful, as well as soft and cuddly, and I hope will make the young recipient happy.  The pattern is from Fons & Porter's Love of Quilting, March-April 2015.

I used my largest Baptist fan stencil to mark the big-stitch quilting design, and used DMC #8 Pearl Cotton for most of the quilting.   This was a first attempt at big stitch quilting, so a lot of discoveries there - like stabbing my fingers a LOT more than has ever happened with traditional quilting!  The work does go faster though, which in this case worked out well since I wanted to have it completed in time to give it to her as part of her birthday gift.  And it just wasn't a quilt I would have wanted to spend months-on-end doing traditional hand quilting, nor did I want to machine quilt it.  The big-stitch quilting left the quilt soft and cuddly, and sweetly old-fashioned looking.   After washing the quilt finished at 58x68 inches.

A couple weeks ago I was the lucky winner of a giveaway on Country Lady Quilts blog, and received this sweet packet of fabrics from Terry.  Thanks so much Terry, I'm thinking these will soon find their way into a baby quilt on the soon-to-be-started list.

Our short January thaw is apparently over as it's snowing again this morning, however we have much to be thankful for as last weekend's nor'easter missed us entirely!   But much as I don't care for the cold and snow anymore, these days do afford more time in the sewing room and that, my friends, makes me VERY thankful!