More Joy Coming Right Up

Today has been incredibly productive. I made a pledge to myself last night that I would get up, get dressed and get busy by 9:00 a.m. this morning. I almost made it...it's just that I discovered the Fall-Inspired Mini Quilt Swap Flickr group at 11:30 p.m. and stayed up until 1:30 a.m. perusing quilts and blogs and websites. This happens to me a lot. Easily distracted by colourful images.

So, I only missed my self-imposed deadline by half an hour. Not bad for the holidays. My Fall Mini Quilt needs to be in the mail by January 18th. Not a major panic, but it is the second UFO on my list for Jacquie's Joy in the New Year challenge and that deadline is January 1st (hours away!).

Remember, it started with this:

There have been several design ideas floating around up there. I like to keep my options open. It's my first swap, so I want to do a good job. I did some spying on my partner. Seems like she is a fairly traditional quilter and she kept the options open too, by not specifying any likes or dislikes in her swap profile. Fall for me here in Canada obviously involves maple leaves. That goes without saying, really. So that was one design element decided.

At first, I imagined pieced maple leaves, but when I started cutting and piecing the batiks, this happened instead:

1" strips pieced to make 25 patches. Sweet. As in 'sweet hook-up', not cute (watch Napoleon Dynamite for superb contextual example). I digress....that lead to this:

Which immediately lead me to this book, my bible of all things quilty, for setting triangle and corner triangle calculations for a 5" finished block. Once I had those all pieced in, I got to thinking that a skinny little tuck border might frame everything nicely and *GASP* I happened to have a perfect piece of Thimbleberries fabric in my stash. Shhh, don't tell anyone. Don't ask me how it got on my shelf. Even though I'm technically allergic to it, I managed to sew it into my quilt before any hives could break out.

Not bad! Finally, as you can see, the maple leaves. I downloaded a free template, traced it onto some Lite-Steam-a-Seam II and cut out wool leaf outlines to fuse onto the 25 patches. I'm very happy with the results of my day, considering I didn't have a plan when I started.

Tomorrow, the 'quilt as desired' part happens. Then, I will have 2, count 'em, TWO finishes!! Mwah ha ha.
What I haven't yet told you is this: Robert Downey Jr. kicks some serious butt (and leaves me somewhat weak in the knees) in Sherlock Holmes. I saw it with my QFF Andrea and T last night. Guy Ritchie has a winner with this one. The sets, costumes, acting, dialogue, lighting, score...all brilliant. Go see it!