a habitat finish

No more big quilts for a while!  This one really took it out of me.  It is for my youngest sister Kelly for high school graduation (she's graduating a little early).  I am happy with how it turned out and I am happy that I made it, but after just finishing a queen sized quilt and then making this bigger-than-twin sized quilt, I am going to be sticking to lap sized and smaller for a little bit.

I have been hoarding this stash of Habitat by Jay McCarroll for a little while and I am hoping that this was the right time to use it.  Kelly told me that she likes maroon and black and turquoise and doesn't really like pink or bright colors.  There is some pink in the quilt, but hopefully it is acceptable :)  I have discovered that I have a really hard time making something that doesn't have pink in it.

I have been photographing quilts lately on my neighbor's fence (when they are not home, of course, since I haven't asked permission), but this quilt was too big for that so we ventured to a local park.  This is a very embarrassing experience for me.  Our parks are very crowded and there tend to be a lot of very attractive, well dressed women there (it is in Beverly Hills!) and they always look at me weird when I am wearing sweats and trying to photograph a giant quilt by myself.

The pattern that I used for the quilt is called Fire Drill and it is from Elizabeth Hartman's 2nd book.  You can see her version here.  I did add a column and a couple of extra rows to make it big enough for a twin sized bed, so I think the finished dimensions were about 81"x93".  I got a little carried away with the quilting and did a diagonal grid of straight lines in the prints and pebble quilting in the gray solid.  This is probably the part that really burned me out about this quilt, it was very time (and thread) consuming.  

Kelly is more than 11 years younger than I am so I am a little afraid that I am out of touch with what she would like.  She was only 7 years old when I moved out of the house, and now she is a much-trendier-than-I-have-ever-been 17 year old.

I obviously went a little overboard with the photos today.  I figured I might as well go for it since they all thought I was crazy anyway!

Since this is my only WIP, I'm going to use this post to linkup with WIP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced.  I am off to work on a quilt for my son which I have been very much looking forward to getting started!

p.s. I got an email today that my Remixed Geese quilt was featured here!