Best of 2017

Cheryl at Meadow Mist Designs is hosting a nice link party, inviting us to share our five best posts of 2017. We get to define for ourselves what constitutes "best," so I decided to share five of my favorites.

Fiery Tree is my favorite baby quilt from 2017. It was the perfect match for the baby's room, which is decorated with paintings of trees in all the seasons. I quilted it free motion quite heavily, and love the drape and feel of it.

Twist N Scrap is my favorite serendipity quilt of 2017. What is a "serendipity quilt"? That's when you make a quilt for no particular reason and then it turns out to be just the right gift for someone! This quilt was given to my husband's cousin's wife's sister, whom I had only met a few times. She is struggling with her health, and this quilt gave her some comfort. She wrote me a thank you note that still brings tears to my eyes. Never underestimate the power of an unexpected quilty gift!

Bright Astrodelic is the quilt with my favorite quilting, a tightly spaced spiral made with my walking foot. The texture is delicious! I used several brightly colored threads to match the piecing, and love how they look against the black background. This one was a serendipity quilt, too!

Gulf Coast Churn Dash is my favorite scrappy quilt of the year. It's the first quilt I ever made using an "old fashioned" block combination: chunky churn dash plus hour glass. The dashes were made completely from my strip scraps and I had no idea what it would look like when finished. I was very happily surprised! The quilt was donated to Covered in Love, one of my favorite charities.

And finally, this is the quilt I am most proud of: O Star! The quilt was made as a gift for my mother, who needed to have surgery on fairly short notice. I had about 10 days to make this large lap size from scratch. I chose the Night Sky pattern, which Mom had given me as a gift, and the triangle piecing was a challenge. I did FMQ with lots of thread color changes, and tackled the angled edge binding. It wasn't an easy quilt, but the smile on Mom's face made it completely worthwhile. And more importantly, her surgery was a total success!

Thank you for stopping by to read about my five best quilts. I'm also going to share a summary of the whole year. I've done this in previous years with the Trunk Show link up, but that seems to be defunct this year. It's useful to me to have everything all in one post to refer back to in the future, so here goes:

In the first quarter, I worked on several charity projects. The two little quilts on the left were donated to Project Linus. The house quilt was sold by my niece's sorority at a charity auction to benefit CASA in Washington state. The pillowcases were for Camp Heartland which serves youth with HIV/AIDS. The bright diamond quilt was sent to a friend in Holland to help her heal from serious illness.

Second quarter, I finished up a number of small quilts that were pieced while we lived temporarily in a tiny RV during February and March. I couldn't spread out enough to quilt there, so I accumulated a bunch of tops that got finished in April and May. Four of those went to Project Linus. It was also the time of year when Sarah runs her Hands2Help Challenge, so I made one quilt each for Happy Chemo, Camp Hobe, the International Institute of St. Louis, and Covered in Love.

International Institute benefits recent immigrants to the US, and they requested quilts no smaller than twin size. This majestic mountains design I made for them was a real challenge to quilt in my small space. It cemented my resolve to stick with pieces no larger than about 60" on a side.

In mid-summer we docked the boat in Charleston, SC and stayed for over four months. I had lots and lots of time to sew and was inspired to make a bunch of 36"x48" wheelchair lap quilts for Quilted Embrace. 

It was also a quarter with several finishes for gifts to friends and family. I'm pretty sure I sent the pink bordered Kaffe hexagon quilt to Covered in Love, but was sorely tempted to keep it. DH says we'd need a bigger boat to keep all my favorites, so that ain't happening.

The fall and winter of 2017 included more quilts for family and friends, Covered in Love, Project Linus and the Charleston UU church's charity auction. 

It's fun to look back over an entire year's worth of quilting. 2017 seemed to be a year of trying new blocks and patterns, from hexagons to kaleidoscopes, strippy scraps to attic windows, houses and hourglasses and mariner's compasses. I used lots of novelty theme fabrics and panels: cats, horses, fish, coffee and vegetables, just to name a few. I can honestly say I enjoyed making every one of these quilts, and my fondness for the craft continues to grow.

OK, let's get sewing for 2018!