Every quilt tells a Story

Christmas is almost here and I feel relieved to have all my Christmas gift quilts finished.It doesn't seem right to just post a photo of each one and be done, each quilt has it's own unique story.

 This first quilt's story starts 6 years ago (2005). I wanted to make a quilt for my Nephew for his 13th birthday. Figuring black and white was a good combo for a teenager I cut a large quantity of pieces, in fact all the pieces for this quilt and arranged them all on my design wall. It looked great so I started sewing since his birthday was only a few days away. So much for Good intentions, I quickly realized I was NEVER going to get it made in time. Into a bag it went, maybe 10% sewn. I quickly cut a much simpler (as in much less pieces) quilt and stitched it together barely making my deadline. 6 years later I finally took this poor quilt out of it's bag and tried to remember what I was doing with all these pieces. I hadn't taken any photo of my plan so it was like trying to put a puzzle together. Eventually I got it figured out and today it's finished and guess what? I'm giving this quilt to my son who also happens to be 13 yrs old!

   
Lots of fun fabrics in this quilt, as well as some 'uglies' snuck in here and there.

And what a great backing this is for a boy, Giant fire-breathing dragons!

And this next quilt I'm calling "Yikes, Stripes"
This project started out simple enough. A kit from Joanne's clearance section. I actually bought 2 thinking that they would make quick gifts or charity quilts someday down the road. Well I decided to "whip one up" for my eldest son for Christmas. I cut it out and sewed it together just about like the kit showed. It looked about like this:

Well that would have been a quick and easy gift if my brain would just rest while I sewed it together. But No!, my brain just kept imagining all the cool effects that could be had by combining the stripes just so. No sooner than I got that first top done I started cutting out the second kit, but this time I skipped the squares and cut all triangles. I arranged them on my design wall only to find that I didn't have all the 'correct' triangles. I needed many more horizontal stripes than vertical ones, so I picked apart the first quilt top to 'Steal' the triangles I needed and replaced them with the rejects from my second quilt. So much for a quick project! Here's my 'improved' stripes quilt:

A much more pleasing quilt! Although now I'm saying, Please no more stripes, at least for a little while.