finally, the quilt!

it’s so reassuring to see that other people have trouble photographing quilts well in winter!  i have struggled to get a good shot of this one and i think this is the best it’s going to get:

i made this quilt as a gift for a friend of mine in exchange for one of her monster paintings.  i’d sent her a few flickr photos as inspiration and she chose this one.  i thought maybe she’d choose a few different quilts–maybe one for the colors, one for layout, but no, she liked that exact quilt and wondered if i could just make her one just like it.   so i did my best and… i love it!  (and so does she!)

i decided to title this quilt, “one fish, blue fish.”  it was the first time i’ve tried loopy quilting and i couldn’t believe how quickly it went.  and i just love the whimsical effect it gave.

my loops were considerably less regular than most of the loopy free-motion quilting that i’ve seen on other people’s quilts, but i still like the way it turned out.

i didn’t draw on any guidelines or anything and i was afraid that the loopy lines would all tilt to one side or something, but even though the lines aren’t perfectly straight, they still look surprisingly good!  this was also the first quilt that i hand-finished sewing the binding on.  i did it over christmas travels and my original stitch method was driving me batty (trying to run the needle inside the fold of the binding), so i switched to something slightly more visible (just catching the bottom edge of the binding and running the needle inside the layers of the quilt) but way easier, and actually more stable since i took shorter stitches with the second method.  i might consider doing it again.

the quilt is currently hanging in an art show of library-staff-produced artwork at the downtown library (how exciting!) but i think it’s looking forward to being cuddled with.

i also love the way the back turned out.  this photo doesn’t do it justice, but at least you can see the layout.

i am very much looking forward to having my own computer (with photoshop express and my own, familiar keys!) back.  hopefully sometime next week?  i had no idea how much i would miss it.

but let’s end with one more little happy thing for today–

i had an appointment this week in a shopping center i’d never explored before and discovered a bread shop there.  i went in and, of course,  had to order a chocolate croissant and the proprietor asked me if i liked chocolate croissants and when i wholeheartedly agreed, he said that when he was in paris, every morning they ate a plain croissant with a few bars of really good chocolate along with their cups of coffee and he said i just had to try it like that, so he tucked in a plain croissant and a few sticks of chocolate for free.  how nice!  and… it really was delicious.