Christmas finish

I finished my mom's Christmas disappearing 9 patch quilt last Wednesday, but promptly jumped on a plane to spend Christmas weekend with family in Minneapolis, so pictures had to wait 'til I had some time and a nice backdrop to shoot.

I go back and forth between getting a headache from everything that's going on here and really liking it.  It's really busy, with all of those charms from the fabric swap, but framed it with a cool red, and backed it with more traditional Christmas colors, so I think that helps bring it together.  Binding was another Wrap it Up pattern from Connecting Threads.

I have provided straight-on shots so you can see the whole finished product as well as some "action shots" of the quilt!  I did a diagonal straight-line quilt, which went so much faster than fmq'ing, uses so much less thread, and looks so much cleaner.  Not sure if I am going to dive back into fmq'ing just yet...we'll see.

After my mom received the quilt, we headed down to the creek by their house, where most of our family photos take place, so I could get some new pics of my folks.  I brought the quilt out at the end of our photo shoot.  I think they thought me a bit strange, pulling the quilt out of a garbage bag and draping it over a park bench!   Here's a shot of my beautiful daughter showing you the diagonal straight-line quilting on my Christmas quilt.  I didn't have any red thread, which is what I would have preferred, but a tea green did the trick almost as well, I think.

Here's the quilt just hanging out.  Hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas with friends and/or family!