Animal print quilt

This was a gift for my mother for Christmas. I finished it before then, of course, but I didn't want to post it and ruin her surprise. I didn't get to see her face, because she's in a different state, but I think she liked it. I seem to recall her liking animal prints. Anyway, it wasn't a very difficult or involved quilt since it's just squares. (I think they were 8" finished.) What's remarkable about this quilt is simply that I finished it and finished it on time. And it's kind of big -- queen-sized.

Of course, I started it for Christmas two years ago, but at least it's finished now. I'm really working on it. You see my "Current Projects" list? It has 16 quilts on it. They are all in some form laying all over my sewing room. Three of them are finished quilt tops and just waiting to be quilted. Two of them just need borders, and then they'll be ready to be pinned. Three are partially quilted (one hand quilted, two machine). One I have all the blocks in rows, and I just need to sew the rows together. The other half of them (7) are partially cut out, partially sewn, whatever. That doesn't include the other 60 quilt tops waiting to be quilted or the other 20 or 30 partial projects I have in bins in my garage (and partially laying around my room too). I'm not exaggerating. When I say I'm not a finisher, I am not kidding. Part of the problem has been that I could get them to quilt top stage, but I didn't have a machine that could quilt, so they were all in line for hand quilting -- and we know how long that takes!

A couple of years ago I got a walking foot for my machine, so that has helped a little, but the backlog is so big, that I'm still quite a bit behind. Here is a close-up of the quilting on this quilt. I just did mostly vertical lines -- they are slightly diagonal, but they go from the top of the quilt to the bottom -- nothing left to right.

I had to piece the back, because I didn't quite have enough of the backing, and of course, I'm still on a fabric dearth -- well, there's no dearth around here, because there's a lot of it lying around, but let's say I'm on a fabric-buying moratorium still. I also did a scrappy binding for the above-mentioned reason. Somehow, I still have some animal prints left, so I can do something else with them in the future. I'll give it a rest for now and try to tackle my list on the side there. Maybe I will do pictures of everything on the list, so you can see where I'm at (and maybe I'll be motivated to finish)!

Okay. So I'm going to go finish some stuff -- although I have a bunch of baby quilts to make and some baby shower invitations. I know we haven't seen any cards for a while. I'll show you the invitations when they're done. Since I have to make something like 40 of them, I have a sneaking suspicion they're going to be relatively simple. Have a great day and do something fun (aka crafty)!