It's a Winter Wonderland...

It's somehow fitting that as I've finally finished quilting a winter themed quilt, spring looks like it might be making an appearance.  Yeah!  I have never spent as much time quilting a quilt as I did this one.  I started it last August (although I truthfully I didn't get that much quilting done during the holidays).  Please ignore the photo bombing cat in any pictures.  She was being a pest that day.

My mom hand embroidered all of the snowmen blocks and pieced the top.  The pattern is Winter Wonderland by Crabapple Hill Studio.  I offered to quilt it for her a couple of years ago but only just got around to it.  One of the reasons I waited so long was because I wasn't quite sure how to quilt the embroidered blocks.  Kathy from Troublesome Creek Quilts was nice enough to share some links where she had seen the the same quilt quilted, including a great one by the Quilted Pineapple.  I took some inspiration from her in quilting mine.

I started by outlining all of the embroidery with silk thread.  Obviously that took a while.  Then for each embroidered block, I drew my quilting design on Golden Threads quilting paper and quilted it.  I did the same thing for the large snowflakes in the solid blocks in the border.  Everything else, I freehanded.

Deciding how to quilt something can be the hardest part for me.  I look on the internet and in books for inspiration.  And because I had such a difficult time with this one, I'm going to share pictures of all of my quilting for anyone else who makes this quilt.  (Also, I made this exact same quilt for myself and would like to remember how I quilted it when I finally get around to quilting mine!)  However, there are a ton of pictures so I'm going to put it in a separate post.  If you're not interested, you can skip right past it.

I was so happy to finish quilting this and give it to my mom.  I love how it turned out.  And although she put absolutely no pressure on me to get it done, it's nice to have it off my list and be able to move on to something else.

And so, Lord, where do I put my hope? My only hope is in you. 

Psalm 39:7 (NLT)