Two Quilts Done!

I usually don't have a lot of deadlines with my quilts, but I find that when I do, I'm able to actually finish them in a timely manner!  These two quilts are perfect examples of that, because not only did I finish them on time, but more than a week early!  And that feels good!

The first one up is the Kona Solids Challenge quilt that I made for the ECMQG.  I mentioned this before, but for those of you who are new to my blog, I did a Solids Challenge Quilt before, when I was part of the LAMQG.  I hated that quilt, and still do!  So to have a second chance at this challenge was a good thing.  I'm much happier with this quilt.

It only consists of three blocks (which I posted about here), but each of those blocks consisted of over 50 pieces.  I wanted this to be a functional (meaning, kind of big) quilt, as well, so there's alot of negative space in it.  This quilt is for our couch, and it's big enough for me to snuggle under with all the kiddos.  It's also big enough for my husband to use comfortably.

I have to give some serious props to my husband.  I had no idea how to quilt this.  I posed the question on the Modern Quilt Guild Facebook page, and got some great suggestions, but I needed the quilting to not be really time consuming, because I'm still new to this three kids thing, and the quilt needed to be finished by the meeting, which is on March 30, and I needed to finished another quilt by March 31.  So when my husband gave me his suggestion, I realized that would be the quickest option.  And it turns out, I really like it, and think it was the best way to quilt it.  I basically just outline each star, and made the lines extend out as far as they would go. 

After the main quilting was done, I thought the stars still needed a little more detail, so I traced those inside and out with black thread.  I have never quilted with black thread before (remember this for later), but after I did one of the stars, I really liked the way it looked, so I did it with the other two.

For the back, I just wanted to keep it simple.  So I used the scraps from the stars on the front, and improvisational pieced together a block. 

I like the way the black-outlined stars look - it gave it a little more oomph to what otherwise have been a pretty plain back.

I used Essex Linen in Natural for the front and the back.  I don't know if it's obvious from the pictures, but I had two different dye lots of the linen, and the color difference is pretty substantial.  Turned out looking pretty cool, though!  I used the lighter dye lot on the strip of stars going down the front of the quilt, and going across with the improv block on the back.

For the binding, I chose one of the colors from the charm pack - Kona Coral - to use, but I also put in a few more scraps on one part.

I can't wait until our meeting to see what everyone else made!

This next one, I mentioned last week, was totally and completely inspired by a quilt I saw on Pinterest.  I needed to make a quilt for someone who's getting married, and when I saw this, I knew I had to make it! 

Moda Crossweave seemed to be the most "tree-ish" looking fabric that I could decide on, so I used Tan for the front and Natural for the back.

It's hard to see in those pictures, but I did wood grain quilting.  And remember how I said I had never quilted with black thread before?  Well, this one is totally quilted with black thread.  But I thought that's what it really needed.  Here's a little better perspective on that...

And here's a glimpse of the label and the binding (Moda Crossweave in Blue).

Since I've got two finishes to show for, I'm linking up to Amanda Jean's Finish It Up Friday.  Check out what other people have finished up this week!