Tyrol Quilt Finished!

Hooray! I put the last stitches in the binding of Tyrol yesterday late afternoon. It was too late in the day to take any nice photos outdoors, but that will hopefully be something that Bruce and I can figure out today. I have to be the holder-upper while he photographs (since his arm surgery). But that’s OK if I can find a good place in the yard to photograph. In the meantime, though, these pictures taken in my studio will have to do.

Tyrol finished at 67” x 82”, before laundering. 

The focus fabric around which the color scheme was built, is an old Amy Butler print from her Lark fabric line some 6-8 years ago. The camera sees it as more blue than the jade/teal it really is.

For the quilting, which was done on my Bernina, I chose a loopy design that included three-petal leaf (or petal) motifs scattered throughout. The outer border was done in a double-loop vine. Nothing too fancy, but the curves were a nice contrast to the angles and points of the pieced flowers. It took me three sessions of quilting on three different afternoons to get it done. 

The backing is a two-toned orange print that my DIL Kim and I selected together. The binding is the same jade focus print. 

I washed the quilt after these pictures were taken, so any subsequent pictures from today will show the quilt as more soft and crinkly. 

Tyrol will go to Paula, who is my DIL’s mom. It was a pleasure to sew this as a Christmas present for her, because we all adore her (me, Bruce, and my son Ryan - she’s his MIL). 

Next I’ll be sewing a few borders on this Christmas truck panel quilt for my brother. I’m keeping it really simple with no additional outer blocks. I’ll just add plain borders to bring it up to a good size, then back it with a closely-matching print of tossed trucks.. Badda-bing, Badda-boom. Done before you know it. 

I’m hoping to show this quilt as a finish next week so I can get on to the next Christas quilt, which will be for Paula’s husband Bill (AKA my son Ryan’s father-in-law). 

But there was plenty of Rainbow Scrap sewing this past week. My yellow scraps had really accumulated because I sewed a lot of quilts with yellow and/or gold in them over the last year. I’m linking to Scrappy Saturday at Angela’s So Scrappy blog. 

16 Twin Sisters blocks at 6.5” (unfinished) each. 

After sewing them, I had 113 out of the 120 I needed to make a quilt measuring 60x72”. So I just pulled some mixed-color fabric chunks and sewed the remaining 7 blocks. 

The block on the top left was made from four little remnant strips I had from a border I’d sewn for Quilts for Kids. So all those blocks are done! Now they'll join their brethren - oops, I guess they’ll be joining their “sisters” since they are called Twin Sisters blocks - to be stitched into a quilt top after the Christmas obligations are sewn.

And then I moved on to the Split Nine blocks. They, too, are a 6.5” size, and I sewed 18 of them.

Of these Split Nines, I’ve sewn 104 out of the minimum 120 I’ll need. However, I may need to sew more depending on how I decide to set them. At any rate, I started these in March, so I still have a couple colors to add to them next year, most notably orange. I’ll probably also add a few light greens. We’ll see what the setting design dictates.

On a personal note, there’s not much new here. The weather is still warm (too warm for autumn), but the leaves are changing. Bruce is still going weekly to the occupational therapist and learning more fine motor skills with his bio-mechanical arm and hook. I had a mammogram that came back fine, but now I have to schedule my annual physical. Ugh. We are digging up the last of the garden - the tomatoes - today. Actually, Bruce is doing that and I’m bringing in yard decorations and the remaining flower pots. Many of my roses are blooming again so I’ll cut some and make an indoor bouquet. Have a great week!