Pining for some sparkle

 Hi everyone! Holy cow, it's December. I feel like I lost all of November somehow, and I'm hoping not to lose December, which is far more festive than any other month. For Thanksgiving, we went off to see our older grandchildren, and we had more fun than you can imagine, including putting up the Christmas tree and having cake for the twins' birthday. We also got to draw pictures, play 'fetch,' and hear all about school and all the other kid things you miss when you're not around every day. It was super awesome. Also, there was turkey.

So now we're back to the same old same old, and it's time to get our own place looking festive. I need some sparkly lights, darn it! In that spirit, I have finished up another quilt with some happy undertones: 

 

 

I don't know if this is really Christmassy, but I like it a lot and it adds a lot of brightness to a kind of gray part of the year. All those leaves will be picked up soon and then it will be pretty bare for a while.

 

Look at all that fun variety!

 

This is my version of Pine Tree Point, which is a Bonnie Hunter pattern that you can get HERE. I repurposed a failed Rainbow Scrap Challenge project into this happy top earlier this year, and just quilted it up recently. I have no regrets about cutting up that planned project and turning it into this one. How could I when it looks so great?

I quilted this myself on rented longarm time in a pattern called Popcorn, which is kind of swirly and twirly and looks a little bit like snow blowing if that's what you want to see. Mostly it just gave the quilt a great texture and made all those strings look great. Also, it was pretty easy to follow with the longarm and hid a lot of bobbles and bumps. It's really hard to make that panto look bad, thank goodness.

When your longarmer tells you to stay-stitch around the edges of your string quilts, you should definitely do it. They stretch! I managed, though, because I had stay-stitched the edges and because I still go really slow. I love all the strings in the border, though, and would definitely do this as a border again. I threw everything in there-- even pink and yellow along with the white, beige and a few grays-- and it still turned out looking great.

I used a piece of a wide backing that I had, though the quilt is only about 48 by 60. I cut up my piece of backing for several smaller quilts that wouldn't fit on one piece of standard yardage. I think I'm getting spoiled by these wider backings, or maybe I've just gotten too lazy to join backing pieces now. The binding doesn't exactly match the blue frames in the quilt, but it is really close. It's also the smallest binding I've ever done. I usually cut the binding at 2-1/2 inches for a double fold binding but made a mistake and somehow cut this one at only 2 inches. I couldn't stretch the fabric, so I went ahead and used the 2 inch cuts. It was a struggle, but it worked somehow.

 

I'm not sure this is a Christmas quilt, really, but it fits right in with a lot of our other decor, and I'm glad that it's finished in time for the season. The unquilted top list is getting pretty short, too, and I'm really jazzed about that. What if I finish all of them? Yikes!

I hope all of you had a great holiday and are having fun getting ready for the next one. Bring on the sparkly lights! Maybe I better grade these exams first, though, because Christmas is not the only thing that's coming soon. Finals are on the horizon. Double yikes!

Have a good weekend, all! Do something festive!

Sharing at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Finished or not Friday, Brag About Your Beauties, Patchwork and Applique, Oh, Scrap, and soscrappy for RSC 21.