First Finish of the Year

I finished my first quilt of the year just before the end of January. We'd been invited to watch the Royal Rumble (that's a wrestling pay per view event), and knowing that I had three hours of me being planted on a couch in front of a television, I brought a quilt to finish hand-stitching the binding down.

You know, I think that last step is quickly becoming my favorite step. It's that sign to myself that I've finally gotten through all of the snags that I typically run in to (including remembering HOW to correctly connect the two ends of the binding).   I can finally stop fretting about the quilt, and just stand back and let it be.

I had to borrow the railing at work to take these photos - mine is three feet outside my sliding glass doors, but there's also about three feet of snow between me and the railing.  I have to get the snow cleared before I can even think of draping quilts over it.

I decided on a simple straight line grid, with the lines being about 1 1/8" apart.  I say "about" because I used my walking foot and simply aimed to go from corner to corner of each square rather than drawing guidelines all over the quilt.  I DID mark guides all along the borders.  Quilting took about eight total hours and almost 1000 yards of thread.  

So, my lines aren't perfectly straight.  You know what, though?  It's done, and no one will ever know but me! I'm super in love with the polka dot fabric (it's a Joann's print) I used for the backing.  I'd been debating what to do with it since buying it.  I think it brings just the right amount of whimsy to this quilt!

All of the fabrics for this quilt came from my stash, something that makes me very proud of myself.  I have a lot of fabric - not as much as some people I know, but I'm probably lining my nest with at least 100 yards of fabric.  If I'm not going to use it, why buy it?  The unstated portion of my quilting/creative resolutions for this year was to use as much fabric from my stash as possible.  I have a very limited budget this year for my hobby, so I really need to be able to justify buying anything.  The way to do that is to use it!

Now that this project is out of the way, I have to figure out my back for the Basket Block Sampler top, finish tracing my paper piecing templates for another project onto tracing paper, and figure out my design for my Doll Quilt Swap partner.

I'm actually feeling frustrated by the DQS... My partner seems to like far more traditional fabrics than I'm used to using anymore, so it's an odd stumbling block to run into.  Especially considering that I used to be the definition of a traditional patchworker.  This weekend, I'm going take some time and really ponder my fabric stash and start sketching.  I'm sort of thinking that I'm going to challenge myself to make this a truly miniature quilt, which will mean a lot of paper-piecing.  We'll see.  It's all about what the fabric tells me it wants to be.