Christmas Clementine

Each year for the past few years I have been making a quilt for one of hubby's siblings (he is #6 of 7). This year it was for sibling #4 - who loves orange as much as I do.  So for her I created "Clementine" - using this pattern from AllPeopleQuilt.com and modifying both size and layout just a bit to suit my fabric availability, and the finished size I desired.  I was working with charm packs for the blocks and then trying to add in suitable border and backing fabrics as I found them.  At one point I did find yardage in the same fabric line as the charm packs -but I didn't buy it at that time.   My oops. The store was over 800 miles from home, and unfortunately circumstances did not allow me to send a surrogate shopper in my place, so I made do with what I could find locally, and in the end was happy with the results.

I have had the top pieced for quite a while - even sharing it here in August.   It took me a while to find just the right fabric for the back, however - and it was not until close to Halloween that I came across this rich, coarse weave orange fabric that worked perfectly on the back.  A little bit of piecing on the back to get things to the right size, and I was ready to go on this one.

I quilted this with an Aurifil variegated thread I had won in a giveaway - the colors in it really popped with the colors in this fabric for a very rich, dimensional result.  It was so easy to work with, too!  I used it in both the top and bobbin threads.

I wish I could give credit for the quilting idea -I saw it on a blog somewhere but can't recall whose idea it had been.... her concept was an off center concentric spiral - starting with FMQ in the beginning of the spiral, then switching to a walking foot and just going round and round and round.  I reversed that - I started a little ways out from where I wanted to do the FMQ and did the concentric spiral first, then went back and connected in the FMQ to the start of my stitching - it seemed to work better for swapping out feet and keeping the quilt stable to do it that way.  I used a seam near a bold flower motif in one of the blocks as my starting point, and then went back and roughed around the flower petals with the FMQ.  It was striking on the front - and even more striking on the back against the orange.  I was very pleased with how this turned out.

It took a bit before I was able to get good weather to be able to take some outside photos of this - in fact these were taken Christmas Eve, and I had to throw the quilt in the dryer after the photo shoot to dry out where it had gotten wet from the snow on the bench.  I love how it looks against the snow, though.

And the recipient spent the better part of Christmas Eve with the quilt wrapped around her - so I know it is already well loved!

And that's the very best part!