Coast Guard Lady

I wanted to make a quilt for the Coast Guard Lady for Christmas.  I wanted it to be a surprise, so I decided my stash of red and white prints would be a great place to start. I went with a very basic design for this quilt.  Finished size is around 56" x 56".

The real beauty of this piece, for me, isn't the piecing.  It is the quilting.  I went through entirely too much pain due to some operator error on my part to get this one quilted.  I learned a great deal and not all of it was about the seam ripper.

I used a simple meander in the red and white spaces and did some simple ruler-work in the blue.

I think my ruler-work is getting better and I'm not so intimidated by it.

Here is an up-close view of the back so you can see how the straight-line quilting looks.

The borders were done with more ruler-work and pulled the design in along the edges.  I really like this part of the process.  I like that I can have the borders really be part of the overall design and not just some bits that hang of the edges.

This quilt shipped and should have arrived yesterday, just in time for Christmas.

Tiny Trees Hiding in the Snow

I finished up the Tiny Trees quilt top and set out to get it quilted.  It was on my list of unfinished items that I was sure I could get done this weekend.

So, I pressed my backing, found some white batting and set about getting it all loaded into the long arm.

Yet again, I show that I have an unhealthy love of the swirl.  The first few were a little tentative, but I think the swirl was the right thing to do for this quilt.

I kept going until I filled in all the background with little swirls.  I like to think it looks like snow flurries.

See how the swirls make the little trees just pop off the surface of the quilt?

While the front looks like little flurries, the back looks like a blizzard!

This coordinating red is what I have for the binding.  I'll update once I get the binding finished.  I will be breaking my own rules and hanging this one on my wall for the holidays.