Brace yourself, there are only 181 days until Thanksgiving!  More importantly, there are just 153 days until I will be able to take my newly finished, hand-quilted Thanksgiving quilt from its special place of honor in my quilt cupboard and put it to good use!  And by good use I mean, wrapping myself up in it (starting November 1st, after the Halloween hoopla has ended) with a stack of cooking magazines and cookbooks nearby, to start my annual reading of Thanksgiving recipes so I can begin to plan our feast.  That's why I made this quilt.  I needed a Thanksgiving quilt to give me some extra mojo while reading recipes.  Call me crazy but I just couldn't let one more Thanksgiving season come and go while reading recipes under an autumn quilt...

Back in October I posted this picture, I had just finished the top.  As you can see, there is a ton of hand-embroidery!  I spent most of September/October dealing with a kidney infection so I had to lay-low, and since I just can't sit and do nothing, working on this quilt was just the thing I needed to keep me sane!  I had spent so much time with the top on my lap I decided I had to spend a few more months hand-quilting it; best decision I ever made!

Years ago I took a class on how to perfect my hand-quilting...use a smaller needle, take tiny even stitches...it was all fine and good until I realized I was never going to be that kind of quilter...what good are precision stitches if your points don't match?!?  Then I discovered utility quilting.  Larger stitches!  Ooooo happy day!  Utility quilting is big enough to get the job done without toe nails getting snagged!  

 

Besides, quilting through several layers of fabric was just not going to work with tiny stitches.  I used Hobbs Heirloom 80/20 batting in this quilt, it shrinks up so nicely!  I backed this quilt with flannel so it is super soft and warm, perfect for those cold November nights.

  

 

This is Lori Holt's pattern, if you don't know Lori you should, take a visit over to her blog soon, Bee In My Bonnet - you will be amazed and inspired with all she does.  Right now Lori is having a Summer Sew Along, I think I might participate, I love the patriotic quilt she is doing!  I saw her Thanksgiving quilt hanging in a quilt shop in American Fork, Utah in 2010.  I fell in love with it because it reminded me of all the wonderful Thanksgiving dinners I had growing up with family.  I bought the pattern and was so excited to get home and get to work on it.  I think two years passed before I looked at it again!

 

 

Every now and then though I would get the pattern out and cut out a few pieces, then I would get distracted by some shiny object or another quilt and that would be the end of it!  Finally, 10 years later and my Thanksgiving quilt is done!  I changed a few things, it had to "sound" a little more like me, and I added a few things, too, but 90% of the quilt is true to the pattern.

 

It's rainy and cold this morning in Seattle, we've had a lot of thunder booms, one even shook the house!  Rosie is now completely traumatized and won't come out of the closet!  Looking out my window I realize it looks exactly like it does in November, except for the maple tree which would have a few sparse yellow-ish-brown leaves left on it.  Seattle is always green, which is why we love it here so much.  Today might even be a good day to "test drive" my Thanksgiving quilt, we are still in lockdown here so nothing to do but sit in front of the boob-tube and watch movies!

I know you'll find this hard to believe but I don't pre-wash my fabrics, including the reds I used to piece the "raspberry Jell-O salad" block above.  So it shouldn't come as a surprise that those red fabrics bled all over the place!  Thanks to the magic of Color-Catchers I was able to get the bleed out, whew,  another close call!  (Actually there is still a tiny spot that I can't get out but everyone knows Jell-O is messy!)

Don't be fooled, Rosie is still in the closet shaking.  This picture was taken a while ago, when Mother Nature wasn't crying.  Surely she is sick of the quarantine by now, too!  I'm so looking forward to visiting a real quilt shop, buying a bunch of fabric I don't need and then going to a restaurant and spreading the fabric out on the table to think about what to do with it.  The good ol' days!   Hope you are good, healthy, with clean hands and a supply of masks that you'll never out grow!  xoxoxo