Since I started quilting 2 years ago I’ve got a few quilts under my belt. There’s my first, Mediterranean Garden Maze which is based on the Moda Bake Shop Squardey Cat pattern. Then there was a little custom dog quilt for the dog my ex and I had designed with little dog bone squares. Next I made my Quillow which is a simple pattern I custom designed. Later I fell in love with Kate Spain’s Terrain fabric line and started a queen size quilt that is still an UFO in a box from when I moved into my apartment in April 2012.
I had been in a funk when I moved into my apartment and didn’t sew for a while, then I powered through a baby quilt for one of my best friends who was expecting her first boy, I used the Bungle Jungle by Tim and Beck for Moda designer fabric line and the Moda Bake Shop Baby Lattice pattern. That was a challenge cause for the first time I was on a real deadline. Finished the binding the weekend before the shower though, yay me! [pullquote align=right]Quilting is more than a hobby to me, it’s my art.[/pullquote] After that I got ambitious and tried to make a very complicated quilt as a Christmas gift and fell back into the funk when I had to trim down 100 stupid little 4″ squares. I picked that quilt back up this spring (it was folded in my design wall for a very long time cause I couldn’t stand to look at it) and powered through it.
That was the start of the Christmas quilt spree of 2013. Once that was dropped off for longarm services I immediately got going on the next Christmas quilt. That one was almost done when I ran to the store to pick up the fabric for Christmas quilt #3. I was so excited when I dropped the second quilt off that I could get the third quilt in line for the longarm service and all I had to do was have it ready by the time she got to mine in the queue.
The thing that’s killing me though (besides my shoulders and back) is that I can’t share the progress. They’re all beautiful pieces of art cause I don’t care what anyone thinks; quilting is art. I only piece, I don’t quilt but combine the amazing base patterns and blocks my quilts are built from, the stunning fabrics someone have produced, the painstaking hours of cutting, pressing, stitching, placing, re-arranging, seam ripping and re-stitching I put into the quilt, plus the beautiful heirloom quality quilting the long arm quilter uses to hold all that beauty together finally completed by my hours of hand stitching the binding. That’s passion & that’s art.
Sorry got on a tangent there but It’s killing me that I can’t share my progress. I can’t share the happiness of finding 6 prints that compliment each other so well that they’ll make a beautiful (THIS STYLE) quilt cause it’s a Christmas gift for a relative who likes my Facebook posts. I can’t complain and ask for support form the masses when trimming just one more of those blocks to 4 1/4″ might drive me mad. I also keep posting vague photos so as not to give away too much detail!
Christmas quilting is a very isolating sport and after this last one I am done for at least a year. My next quilts will be: completing my queen size quilt as a QAYG (quilt as you go) project, a scrappy look HST quilt that will probably be the death of me but will also be something I’ll be perfectly fine with walking away from between the ebbing and flowing quilt rage. Lastly there’s a charity quilt I’d like to put together with friends. Oh and then there’s a hexagon quilt I’m dying ot make from the fat quarters I get monthly from the Fat Quarter Shop Blogger’s Choice Bundles!! 2014 will be a season of fun quilting: no deadlines, no problems.
PS Can’t wait to post all the Christmas quilts after the 25th! I wish I’d kept a private diary throughout each of their construction, it’d be an interesting gift to give along with the quilt.