Two finishes this week.

I have 2 great finishes this week, both Christmas gifts for our Grandsons.
The first is what I've been calling Avery's Truck Quilt. I'm not too terribly good with creative and catchy names for quilts.

I first saw this particular quilt design over on Jamie's blog here. I asked her if I could use the design, and she graciously said yes. I quilted it with an all over design called Hotwheels, designed by Dave Hudson, and purchased from Digi-tech Designs. 
The design shows up really well on the white areas on the backing. The bindings were done with my now normal faux-piping technique using the border fabric as the binding, with just an accent of orange in between. The backing was made with leftovers from the fabrics for the quilt top, plus other fabrics that I thought said something about Avery. There is book fabric in there, because he loves his books, yellow and chocolate lab fabrics, because he has a chocolate lab named Shelby. There are sailboats, because he loves the water, and lives quite close to it. The back was almost as fun to piece as the front.

Then the other finish I have is Jack's quilt, which is a pattern by Judy Martin, called Celebration, found in her book Scraps.

 I quilted it using a very simple continuous curve. I wanted all the fun fabrics in the quilt to be the focus, rather than the quilting. His binding is a diagonally printed stripe, with red as the piping contrast.
I'm looking forward to being able to give it to him and to explain to him that it is more than a quilt, that it is a game, called I Spy, and start him looking for all the fun things in it..... good things to eat, things found on a farm, things that live in the water......
I had some really fun fish and ocean themed fat quarters that I could never quite bring myself to cut into, since they are just so much fun to look at whole. So I pieced them into a backing.

Here's a close up of one of them. These were such fun quilts to make. There are still 2 more, waiting to be finished, as well. I'm linking up to the blog Crazy Mom Quilts for the Finish it Friday posts.

A lovely package....

A couple of days ago, I received a lovely package in the mail. I'd won a give away of a book from Denise, and it arrived in the mail on Monday.

I started reading it Monday night, and finished it last night.  I'm always on the look out for new authors to read, and this is one that I am definitely going to be reading more of. Along with the book, was a really sweet card.
It's a teacup, and it had a real tea bag tucked into the cup. So cute. 
I'm drinking it right now, by the way.














I've been working all afternoon, and most of the evening getting Avery's Truck quilt done. Here's a sneak peak. I'm using a pantograph from Digiteck designs called Hotwheels, by Dave Hudson.
I got it all done, and started taking it off the machine. When I looked at the back, everything was fine, except for two passes of the pattern. For some very strange reason, the tension on those 2 passes was completely off, with the top thread pulled onto the back. So, there has been some ripping going on, and then it will have to be pinned back to the frame, and those 2 passes re-done. It's about 2/3rds ripped out, now. The one and only bonus of the tension being that badly messed up is that it is really easy to take out. And here I thought it would be done tonight, and I could have maybe even gotten the binding started.  Oh well, that's what I get for not checking the back more often. (sigh) I'll finish ripping it out tomorrow, before going in to work, and get it finished up either tomorrow, or Friday.

I've joined the "Newfo" party

I've been working really hard this week on getting quilts done. After all the opinions about the borders on Avery's truck quilt, I decided to simplify what I was doing. I kept the same idea with the bricks, but only one row of them, and I put a narrow border on either side, to isolate them, and unify them. I like it. Thanks you, everyone who left an opinion.
I'm now in the process of making a backing for it. It's taking longer than I thought it would because I'm using up the leftover layer cake squares, some odds and ends of kiddie fabrics and some fat quarters. I'll get a picture of it when I'm done.

Then, I've gotten a few more of the Great Granny Squares done. There are 11 of them now all sewn together, and I have 2 more all laid out and almost ready to sew up. I think I'm aiming for 20.
Both of these projects were started in August, so they both classify as "Newfo's", which are defined as new projects begun during the month, and not necessarily finished, so the have the potential of becoming new UFO's........ hence "Newfo". Barb, who blogs at Cat Patches started this trend back in January, but this is the first month I've participated. She has a linky party going for everyone who started a Newfo in August, which I'm going to link this post to.