Positivity - a comfort quilt finished

A special quilt..

Back in December, a girlfriend from high school asked me to make her a comfort quilt. I had been thinking about it for some time as I've watched her valiant fight against adenoid cystic carcinoma. She is about the most joyful person I know and has defied every odd and diagnosis. She is truly an inspiration to me personally and I'm grateful she has chosen to document her journey via web and facebook videos.

Naturally, such an important request caused a lot of indecision. I knew the colors she wanted, but she left the design up to me. The awareness ribbon color for this particular cancer is burgundy with cream, so I started there. I had two distinct ideas for the quilt that I decided to merge together. Ok, I had like 10 ideas that had to be narrowed down. Given her always positive attitude, I thought a whole quilt of plus signs would be super cool - and they're also reminiscent of crosses. She wanted a fairly neutral palette which I found challenging so I decided to jazz up the back a bit with some color and inspirational words. Here's what I came up with:

The background is Kona natural and I used a few other Kona solids including burgundy, steel, coal and purple as well as a variety of prints including some Flea Market Fancy and Glimma.

From there I went on to the back. I used the 24" paper pieced Take Wing pattern from Lillyella. Finding just the right colors and fabrics was a real challenge! In the end, I love how it came out against the Kona ash background.

I also picked a few positive phrases to include and the back came together.

 For the quilting, I started by outlining the center butterfly and then just quilted simple straightish/wavy lines.

I like the effect from the front too.

 And now for a shot of Positivity wrapped around her beautiful owner. I'm so happy to say she likes it and the smile on her face made it all worthwhile!

FMT

Dad's Quilt

That special birthday quilt mentioned at the beginning of the year in my Q1 goals was another great finish! I even almost delivered in time ;0). My dad turned 60 this February and I wanted to commemorate this big event with a special quilt.

I'd had several charm packs of Lotta Jansdotter's Simple Marks for a several months with this project in mind. Their decor is pretty neutral and I thought it would look great in the family room. After much deliberation, I decided to go with half square triangles laid out in an arrowhead pattern, Since the HSTs were to be sewn together in 4s, I did the 4-at-a-time method in constructing them. Boy, did this lead to some stretch!! 

The first time around, the borders were so wavy, I had to go back and start over. Thank goodness for friends who happen to be visiting who don't mind spending time with the seam ripper! Miss E took out my wavy borders and had me straight again in just one evening ;).

Miss E wasn't the only friend to pitch in on this one either! My friend Lee was kind enough to whip up an embroidered label for me and it looks fantastic. My disks for my embroidery machine accidentally went into storage when we came to Germany, and I haven't had the time to make new ones.

The quilting design was a separate challenge. I decided to go with a spiral pattern inspired by this one at 107 Quilts.com. I didn't want to quilt through the embroidery in the center because of the light background and brown thread, so I skipped it and did that separately. If I could do this one again, I would not have offset the beginning triangle because it made it difficult when I got to the center.

Eh, you live and learn and it came out fine in the end.

It finished about 70" and is the perfect size to snuggle up on the couch. 

Linking up on the windy side

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