Honestly, I didn’t think I could get 4 quilts finished between mid October and before Christmas. Okay, so one was well on its way and by the first week of December it was with its new owner. But that still left a large lap sized quilt and 2 large wall hangings – 3 feet by 4 feet! Finally I just told my husband I was setting everything else aside and power through because it was stressing me out to have that hanging over my head.

I had the tops finished – on point diamonds – but I had the quilting to do as well as 2 facings and 1 binding. There are 2 twin beds in the room where my long arm is and it’s entirely possible I might have had a nap when I needed a mental break. I originally had a more intricate quilting design planned but knew I had to scale back somewhere so I let the focus be on the embroidery and fabrics instead. These are for a friend whose husband passed away this past summer; the wall hangings are for his twin daughters and the quilt is for his wife. I added a woven stabilizer to the back of each black or grey piece since these were all made from Jersey material.

A friend from our machine quilting bee showed us a nice way to get the back of a facing to lay flat so I tried it out and it worked great. There’s just no way to get around hand sewing though where a facing is concerned that I’ve figured out yet! I talked my husband into delivering them for me over the weekend and she was very touched so it was worth the self-induced stress!

That meant I didn’t get a lot done with Posey Quilts for a couple of weeks but I was hard at work again by the end of last week when a non-quilting friend asked about the business and challenged me to come up with something “even she could make”. Challenge accepted! This is a wall hanging I cut for her – 7 petals, 3 leaves, a stem and the center. Plus it’s 20″ tall so the pieces are large enough to easily handle and not lose. She had it ironed into place and quilted straight lines in less than an hour. She’s a garment sewer so the facing was a piece of cake for her. In no time at all, she had sent me a picture of her finished piece and is giving it as a present for Christmas. Nice!