a quilt for snuggles

Considering the fact that I only made half a dozen quilts last year, I am as surprised as anyone that I am here now to share my first quilt finish of the year before January is even over! I am pretty impressed myself and I am hoping it is the beginning of a good year of makes.

I have had this quilt on my list ever since it was published. I mean, I went over a year ago when it came out and bought the magazine just for this quilt, and it just sat at the bottom of the list. Then weeks ago, as I was sitting down freezing my butt off, I kept thinking how much I needed to make myself a quilt with a nice, warm, snuggly back. This quilt immediately popped into my head and I could not rest until I got to work.

It was back in December I made the first block, and had decided to go with a scrappy black background. I went out and got some more black and then holidays and travel happened so it sat. When I came back to it I realized that I definitely did not have enough black for all the blocks (even only doing 12 instead of all 20) and since I didn't feel like buying more, I did what I do best and made it work. Somehow I got it into my head to do sort of a gradient background of black, dark gray, light gray, and white. It was not an exact science and I am not entirely sure it worked right, but I love it anyway. I was happy to be able to use a fair number of scraps for this one, so that was good. These blocks are no joke though. So.many.pieces! I even went with the strip piecing instructions and it was still nuts! I was not sad to finish these blocks, that's for sure. The quilt ended up being roughly 57" x 75" I think although I forgot to measure after quilting/washing and I am certainly not climbing out from under it now to check :)

The back ended up being some perfect fleece that I have been saving for years. I think it was part of one of those tie blanket kits that I got super cheap intending to make something else with it, but there it was and oh so perfect! I had to do a strip of the coordinating teal along the bottom to make it long enough. I decided to go ahead and still put batting in, partly to make it warmer and partly so you couldn't see the black through the lighter fabrics. It is so thick and soft! I quilted it following the chains through the quilt and then went back and did another double set of lines halfway(ish) between those. I love it and it went surprisingly well. After I quilted, trimmed and rounded the corners (I don't know why I was so set on doing that but I am certain it was the right decision), I serged the entire edge to keep it nice and flat for binding and it helped so.much. I went with solid blue for the binding because for some reason that was stuck in my head. Since I am not totally crazy, I did decide to machine bind this time since, let's be real, I had no desire to hand sew through the fleece.

The point is, I love this quilt and it is already hanging out on my bed, keeping me warm while I snuggle and watch movies and read and knit. Good stuff. It really is quite a bit warmer with the fleece, and I am very very pleased. I am also pretty thrilled that I got it done so quickly; it just feels like a good start to the year. Of course, I am not entirely sure what I am going to tackle next.....clothes? another quilt? scrapbooks? any number of other things on the list? Oh the difficult decisions in life haha!