FINALLY!!!

I can finally show everyone this quilt I've been working on for 6 months! My quilting group "Calendar Girls" selects a block and color-way every December, we make 16 blocks, exchange them in June and 'reveal' our respective quilts in December (yesterday, actually). Since I know some of my quilting buddies read this blog, I had to keep this under wraps because it's a very hush-hush thing every year.

So this is my quilt! We were to make any basket block we wanted in red and white. I came up with about 15 additional blocks because I really wanted a mish-mash of sizes and shapes. This is the 10th year we've been together so I commemorated this fact in the top with paper-pieced lettering.

So what did the others Calendar Girls make? Oh MAN! Every quilt was outstanding! I was surprised that only 5 people chose to add other colors to their quilts. One tea-dyed hers, one added butter yellow stars, one appliqued pink-ish red flowers with green leaves and 2 others added all the colors of the rainbow! The rest were pretty much true to red and white and they were all FANTASTIC!! I'm so lucky to be part of such a tight group, all of whom have become really great friends!

Mended Hearts

A couple of months ago, I told you all about my dear friend Lee who passed away after an 18-year battle with non-Hodgkins Lymphoma at the age of 60. The day before she passed, she called from her hospital bed to "ask me a favor". She wanted me to complete the 2 quilts she'd started for her daughter and her niece. You saw her daughter's, here's the niece's quilt, Mended Hearts, in progress to be finished for Christmas. This is a 'quilt-as-you-go' method, a little different than I'm used to. Once you applique the hearts on to the background, you stitch with different decorative stitches in varying colors then cut some of them in half and 'mend' them together. Then you butt the blocks together to finish the quilt--which is the part I have left to do. I'm sure it will be a touching moment when her husband delivers the finished quilt to her niece.

Miss you, Lee. . .