Vacation Show and Tell

Wait, what's that??

Could it be...?

It is! A quilt!





I know it looks pretty much just like the pictures of the finished top...but the point is, it's not! It's actually a 100% finished quilt, ready to be put in a box and mailed to my newlywed friends. I'm really pleased with it. I basically completely hated the quilting when I was doing it; I felt it was very "beginner". Which makes sense, as I am still very much a beginner when it comes to this whole "machine quilting" thing. But once it was bound, washed, and fluffed up nicely I found it didn't really look bad at all. It just looks like a quilt. (The back, to be fair, still does not look great. But it's not really about the back...)

I feel so great to have it done - that's at least one finish for the year 2008, and at least one finish for my time spent in Texas. And it's done within one month of the wedding it's a gift for...my best finish time ever on a wedding gift. (I'm about to start quilting a quilt that I intended to be a wedding present for a wedding in 2005!!! I'm still going to give it to them, if it ever actually gets done.)

And amazingly that's not the only thing I've accomplished this week. (Well, I have been holed up in a house talking to no one...this is my vacation!) I also finished a baby quilt top out of all salvage fabrics. This used to be a sheet, three blouses, and a pair of pajama pants:





Design wise it's super simple, but it's sweet and soft and will make a nice blanket for a baby girl. (I have one expectant mother in mind...I'm convinced it will be a girl, but we don't actually know yet.) I'm finding it hard to photograph because the colors are pretty subtle...here's a close up:



It's about 30"x30". I hope I will finish it soon rather than letting it languish in the "top" stage. I'm a little bit torn about whether I should use salvage material as batting, thereby making it a 100% recycled quilt, or go ahead and use the fusible batting that I have tons of right now. I think I might as well use the fusible. The only reason I can think of to use salvage (besides doing it on principle) is that I would probably use a flannel sheet and that would make it more lightweight. And that might be good?? I'm not sure. Decisions, decisions.

Today is the last day of vacation, and although I have a lot to do today, I hope to do some rotary cutting so I can have some things "ready to sew" for the limited craft time that I do get back at the house. I think I will be more likely to work on something if a lot of the "thinking" is already done...

All my best to the blogosphere! I've had a great time catching up on quilt blogs and discovering new ones this week...although now it's back to fully neglecting them...