After reviewing this year's posts (and my embarrassing lack of activity), I just realized that I never posted the king-sized quilt that grew from the quilting bug that was inspired by my baby quilt successes!
Looking back, I was clearly under the influence of extreme pregnancy nesting when I started this quilt. Who starts a king-sized quilt when they are in their third trimester? A crazy pregnant lady, that's who! Despite the obstacles posed by my massively distended belly, I managed to do all my cutting and pieced together the top of the quilt. It actually looked like I might finish the quilt pre-baby arrival until I hit a snag basting the backing to the top + quilt batting to create the "sandwhich." To be economical, I usually use a flat sheet as my backing. Before attaching the binding, I use a loose basting stitch on all four sides of the quilt to make a nice, clean edge for attaching my binding. Well, somehow I managed to not square things up properly (it would have helped if I had properly basted the entire quilt, like you're supposed to ... but all that time on my hands and knees, with 8-month pregancy belly? yeah, right! that wasn't going to happen) and it got all wonky, and I decided not to deal with it. So this massive, so close to being finished, quilt got shoved in the closet and didn't re-emerge until last summer and the then baby-to-come was almost one!
I'm glad I got as far as I did on finishing the quilt though, because it really drove me to finish it last summer. If I hadn't finished the top, I know it would have languished much longer in unfinished-project-limbo. I love the finished quilt! But once I finished the quilt, I realized I had created a new project: pillow sham covers. The old pillow sham covers now just didn't quite fit with the new, cheerful quilt (see below).
The first decision I had to make was color and pattern. Should I make another patchwork design, but using a different pattern? What color? After much debate, I decided I wanted to avoid blues and greens, since I figured it would make the pillows basically blend in with the quilt--and I wanted them to complement the quilt, but stand on their own. Secondly, I opted to stay away from a patchwork pattern--partly for ease (wanting to keep things simple so the project actually got finished!) and to not distract from the pattern in the quilt. In the end, I went for my first mono-chromatic patchwork piece in shades of yellow. I purposefully staggered the seams so I could be lazy and not worry about cutting everything perfectly and matching everything perfectly.
I'm really happy with the end result! I love it so much, it had me dreaming of mono-chromatic future quilts ... e.g. shades of red and green for a winter "Christmas" quilt I could pull out for the holidays, etc. But the awkward fumbling of dealing with such a massive amount of fabric to create a king-sized quilt has staved off the quilting bug for now. That and actively avoiding the awesome quilting books that are slowly but surely joining my library ... we'll see how long I can last out!
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