1st quilt completed for 2006!

"Christmas Packages"

Bias Buddies Block Exchange 2003

It's about time, don't ya think? I really need to make a push to get more quilts done. I have so many in various stages. Maybe with my new HQ16, it might happen. This is the second quilt I quilted on it, but the first one to have the binding. I sewed it on last night while waiting for my hubby's plane to land in Frankfurt. I needed to tell him where to get his money at Western Union, update on his credit cards,etc. Poor guy, without his license, they wouldn't let him rent the PREPAID car! So he is taking trains everywhere. He usually travels by mass transport in France, but in Germany, he always rents a car. You know, the autobahn! :) The only time he can legally go fast. Maybe God is protecting him this trip, hahaha. But you never know. He was able to get his $$ and they made him a new credit card at the American Express office, so now we both can rest a bit easier.

Anyway, this quilt is one of my small group quilt block exchanges that we do every year. We've been doing it since 1997. It's kind of a neat way to remember who you quilted with that year, what the fabrics in fashion were, and what was popular in the way of patterns. I'll dig out my photos and see if I can't get all of them posted. I need them together anyway. A little bittersweet to look at the past years, as we have lost a few members. And the group got a little large to be meeting in homes, so we split the group. It's like a running history of my group over the years.

"Christmas Packages" was supposed to be a stack and slash type quilt (it's a Sandy Gervais pattern), but it made 30 blocks. Well, we were only 8 in our group and didn't want to make that many. So we just made templates to make them. We bought, as a group, one red, one green and one blue(it's on the border) for everyone to share. Then we were to make a block for each member, using those fabrics as well as more of our own. We assigned colors (for packages, bows and backgrounds) so we would have a variety. Then for the center block, we each had to make our own block. Everyone did something different.