The Queen is Dead, Long Live the Queen!

I finished a quilt! I finished a quilt! So what, you say? Well, it's been years since I actually completed a quilt project that wasn't small enough to hide in my purse. I had called myself Queen of the UFOs (Un-Finished Objects) but I now will have to relinquish the crown. Maybe now I'll call myself Queen of Everything (acknowledgment to Mary Engelbreit here.

When my mom offered to ship gifts to my sister and nephew if I had them ready by today, I thought about going shopping. However, I was inspired by my friend and neighbor who is making all of her Christmas gifts and getting them all finished prior to having surgery on the 17th. She inspires me often. So I dived into the crate of UFOs and came up with a sofa-sized one-block quilt top I made as sample for a class I taught years ago. It still needed borders, quilting and binding, but I was sure I could knock that out in a few hours.

Oh, how the proud are humbled. I managed to make the quilting more complicated than necessary by doing in-the-ditch quilting, 1/4 inch outline quilting and decorative stitching. Then, trying a time saving tip using white glue to baste together binding, I unintentionally used 'fusible' glue, making permanently fused stiff seams in my binding. I can promise you they'll never un-sew! I ended up spending about 12 hours total finishing this quilt.

On the plus side, I was lucky to have enough fabric for the borders in my unsold fat-quarter stash. And I got creative in my binding fabrics by using 2 1/2" wide strips from my recently cut strip stash. Rather than sew on a label on the back, I inked a Christmas greeting with a Micron .03 pen right on the front of the quilt. It's barely noticeable within the 1/4 inch outline quilting.

I'm so happy to have this project finished. It lays flat (mostly) and came out square (relatively) without my trying to hard. And the fleece fabric quilts beautifully, showing the quilting on the back in relief.

While searching for an image to use for Queen of UFOs, I encountered a lovely blog from a quilter from the Netherlands who makes the extra special effort to write in English. Brava for her! Take a look at her wonderful projects at Dutch Blue.

P.S. I promise to post a picture soon. I'm waiting for the sunlight to move across the living room floor so that I can take a picture without a bright spot in the middle.