Twist and Turn top finished

The end of January has crept up on me already.  Thankfully I completed my goal for A Lovely Year of Finishes.  

I also finished up the backing for the quilt.  The backing caused me some problems.  I started off using the leftover strips from the front on the back but they managed to get stretched and just would not lay flat once I had it all together, so I ripped those out and filled it in with the big squares.  I really like how it turned out and could actually be a reversible quilt when it is all said and done.  

Now I have figure out the best way to baste this since as you can see it takes up 90% of my floor space.  

For inquiring minds the name of the pattern for the front is called 'Twist and Turn'  it is from the Batiks Inspired by Bali book by Suzanne McNeill.  I didn't follow the pattern exactly and I made it queen sized where the patter is for a 72"x 84" top.  

A Lovely Year of Finishes 2104, January Goal

Well I hate to admit it, but I didn't finish my December 2013 goal for A love year of Finishes.  I did do a lap quilt from start to finish in less than a week though.  I'll show some pictures of that at the end of this post.   I think that since I didn't finish my Sister's quilt top in December I am going to make it my January 2014 goal.  I did make progress on it in December, I just ran out of time with the holidays and all the family commitments we had going on.

At the beginning of December the fabrics looked a little like this.

I got them cut into nice strips and sewn to look like this by Christmas.

A few days after Christmas they had been cut down a little more and a couple of days ago, I had sewn the green triangles on the ends.  I should mention that these were supposed to be cut at a 45 degree angle, but since someone still can't follow directions, I guess I somewhat have a new pattern here but I'm not giving any information of what degree angle these actually are and the headache I had figuring everything else out.

 I will get this top done here in January, that is my official goal.

Now, I mentioned earlier that I finished a quilt start to finish in December that wasn't even on my radar until the week  before Christmas.   Our lovely pastor's wife took our family pictures for us early in December and wouldn't tell me how much to pay her and that word of mouth was just fine. I couldn't just leave it at that.  I HAD to make her something as a thank you.  

 So here you have it, a Bento box quilt. This was a fun quilt to make and it went together really fast.   It is hard to see my quilting, but I did a large cross hatch for the quilting with a black, white and grey variegated cotton thread.

She loved it.  She cherishes hand made things because she knows the work and time that go into them.

2013 A Lovely year of finishes, finishing party

I did a lot of sewing during the course of 2013 and here are the goals that I met with the A Lovely Year of Finishes.

I did not meet all my goals and I took the month of October off.  I did so many other projects on top of these that I do not know how I got it all done.  I will try to post more of those later but for now you get just these few.

If you didn't get around to joining in the finishing fun of 2013, don't be down on yourself Shanna and Melissa are back with the 2014 version of ALYoF.  They now have a facebook page and instagram as well to strut your stuff.