Finished!!!

I posted pictures for a moment on my Pumpkin Patch Quilter Facebook page - but for some reason they showed up on my personal Facebook so I immediately took it down!  This will be a gift for my Mother in Law and I don't want to spoil the surprise! 

We are celebrating Christmas late with that side of the family...she works swing shifts and wasn't able to get the time off.  I love to give quilts to my Mother in Law because I tell ya, she truly appreciates them.  She puts them all on a quit rack in her living room to show off...and I have given her some real dogs too!!!  LOL*  God love her.  I gave her my very first completed quilt...a rail fence.  I stitched in the ditch (mostly - I got bored and there may have been a few ditches that went without stitches!) for the quilting and I don't think the binding completely enclosed all the layers so there are areas of exposed batting.  I didn't know how to go around the corners of a quilt with binding so it is just sandwiched in between strips.  Lol*  Oh it was a real winner.  LOL*  So sorry Mother in Law!  I thought it was a treasure when I gifted it...  :)

 The cool thing though is she has a timeline of my quilting in a way.  I've given her I think, three quilts...and two to her Mother (one she was buried with when she passed and one that came up missing from the nursing home).  I have shown her projects over the years that I've made and she always indulges me and looks...so she's really seen the progression from not having a darn clue what I'm doing to whatever state of quilting it is I'm in now!!!  :)  Better than when I started...but still a lot left to learn.  :)

I took these pictures last night while the quilt was still damp from removing the markings...it also has no binding, I have to do that today and I'm going to busy here as soon as I get my coffee down getting ready for our Christmas evening.

I decided against painting this one.  I know my family's limits and while they appreciate my artistic mind they want a soft quilt!  Even with the dense quilting this is pretty soft.  I know my Mother in Law too and this will likely reside on a quilt rack.  I tell her every time to use the quilts, that's what they are for...but it does feel good I have to admit to see my quilt a source of pride in her home.  :)

I learned SO much making this quilt.  It was hours upon hours of work...that I loved every moment of.  I drool over those densly quilted artsy slash traditional quilts and I know my quilting pals will understand my deep need to emulate that rich look for myself!  But quilting these heavily stitched pieces is a little different than what I normally quilt I've learned.  Next time I will ditch all the seams.  I picked up on this initially from Cindy but the more closely look at those quilts I adore from other quilters whose work I admire and I can see now how much more that would have enhanced and stabilized this for me when quilting.  I also will echo back around those feathers in the border because there is too much poof around them compared to the rest of the quilt.

This was so much fun...I can't wait to start the next project.  I have some New Year's Resolutions I will share with you when it gets a little closer to the day...but one of them is to make bed quilts for my family and parents.  This will probably take more than a year but I get stuck on these small quilts - we need bed quilts.  Up until now I have focused on small projects and lap sized quilts and after completing a few larger than life quilt tops I'm really wanting to go big for a while.  I have King and Queen quilt tops laying around but truth be told I haven't quilted anything larger than a Twin so I want the experience.  (Do I really want the experience??)  LOL*

If I don't post for a few days...everyone have a Happy New Year!!!