Rising from the leaves

 Hi everyone, and happy weekend! Well, we seem to have made it through yet another week. Every week I'm surprised when Friday comes, but I'm always glad to see it. Our weather here has been up and down, but the one thing that is very evident is that the days are definitely getting shorter. I saw a cartoon this week where a woman is panicky because she thinks it's midnight, but it turns out that it's only 5:30. It doesn't sound funny when I describe, but I definitely chuckled in recognition.

This has been a hard week, but I did manage to finish the Phoenix quilt top! Here it is, out among the fall leaves:

 

It's pretty, isn't it? You can see that we still have a lot of green, but we've also had some leaves falling. Not a lot of pretty colors on our property yet, but there are some around here. I don't really remember last fall, but I really miss the beautiful maple we had in Wisconsin. It always turned such a pretty red-orange.

 

Back to the quilt! This is the Phoenix quilt, a pattern from Sharon Holland that you can get HERE. It was a super-easy quilt to put together. The most time consuming part of it was trimming the hsts, which was strangely peaceful since life is so stressful for me right now. I also had to keep referring back to the layout diagram because I couldn't keep it all straight, but that's probably just me. I kept thinking the blocks were rectangular because of the design they create, but they're actually square, which kind of confused my brain.

 

I made one smallish change to the pattern and used different scrap pieces to make the centers of the flowers instead of what the directions called for. I like how it turned out and added more colors to the quilt. I also thought about adding a row and making the quilt bigger, but in the end I decided that I didn't need a bed-size quilt right now, and I really liked the mix of colors that I already had. Adding a row, though, would be really easy and make this a twin quilt. 

I'm thrilled with this finish and would absolutely make it again. Just a single block would make a nice sized wall hanging, and four of them would be a nice table topper. Next time, though, I would choose a stronger fabric for the corners. I used a pale yellow this time and it's pretty hard to see in the actual quilt. I had such a nice time making this quilt that I also purchased another Sharon Holland pattern, for the Saguaro quilt, and I'm putting that on this list for after the next quilt that I've been cutting out.

So there we are! I hope all of you are staying well and healthy, and that you have something relaxing planned for this weekend. My plan is to try to get a nice nap. They've started putting the siding up on the new garage, and they start early in the morning. But they don't work Saturdays, and I won't be working this Saturday, either!

Sharing at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Finished or not Friday, and Brag About Your Beauties.