The Poppies Quilt

I finished another quilt last week!!!  It's about stinking time, because I started the booger way back at the beginning of May and it has been slow going.  So uncharacteristic of me.  But I guess in the middle of it this little thing called a crafting competition came up.  Then my brain went out the window.

I loved, loved, loved this fabric from the moment I first laid eyes on it.  I found every last inch of it at Wal-mart, they had a whole line of designs with poppies in these rich colors.  I also got the unbleached muslin (which is the solid ivory-ish you see on the front) there and the ivory flannel you see on the back.   It all seems to be a great quality, too.  Can you believe it?  Talk about a budget quilt.

I know that the red & aqua combination is so popular right now... yet something about this much deeper turquoise really spoke to me.  (You may remember how I rarely gravitate to pastels.)  Anyway, I had no real purpose for this quilt; I wanted to keep it for myself.  It quickly became my most favorite that I've done yet.  I don't say that to brag, I just REALLY liked this fabric.  The grid on the front did turn out quite well, so I was a bit proud of myself.

I found the idea for this design (as well as the "stack and whack" method to assemble

these squares) from THIS POST.

It's half covered up in the shade!  I swear, someday I'll learn to take good pictures...

When it came time to quilt it, I wanted to do something different from my usual stippling.  I'm not super excited about straight lines, either, so I thought... what else is there?  After sitting and staring at it for WEEKS, something finally hit me.  I sewed lines that "arched" around one corner and kept going out from there, like a ripple effect.  I made them about 1.5 inches apart.  I started another set of arches from the opposite corner and the 2 met somewhere about 3/4 the way across the quilt.  Then there were a few other small areas to fill in.  I'm terrible at explaining it, but here's the back side where you can see the quilting lines the best.

The back is almost all flannel, as I'm finding that I don't like my quilts any other way!

I used the most concentrated red fabric for the binding, and I love the bright vibe it gives!  It's a small twin size overall.

Over the last month, I painstakingly decided this quilt would be my mother's birthday gift, which I surprised her with tonight.  (So I can FINALLY blog the pictures of it!  Yay!)  But I even told her that I might just give her custody for a year and then I want it back.  This quilt was especially hard for me to give away.  Why does that always happen???  They are something you spend months, if not longer, pouring so much blood, sweat, and tears into creating.  By the end of it, it feels like a very piece of your soul that you are handing over!  (I swear that sounds SO CHEESY until you are the one in that position.)  

*sigh*  

It made me feel better to see mom's excitement over her new quilt.  She had been wanting one for a while.  And she certainly deserved it!  Maybe I'll have to go over for a visit soon...?