Monochromatic Quilts....

This is my blue quilt. You might have noticed that there isn't any blue in this quilt. Well, I wanted to do this pattern, which I found in an Australian Quilts magazine, in blue. A bunch of us girls made a run to a quilt shop, that was being sold, to buy some clearance fabric. I had my heart set on blue, but I couldn't find more than two blues that I liked, and they had about six greens- all asian-inspired.... so that's how the blue quilt turned green. I collected some more of the green and started this quilt. It is a king-size. It took me quite a while to finish the peicing. It was a very fun method where you sew three triangles together, cut it into strips and then flip them over, sew them back together, and that makes one half of the 9"x12" block... oh, ok, you'll have to take my word for it. It was a lot of fun. It is an extremely heavy quilt, with cotton batting. And you know it's name? "Whited Sepulchres" No kidding. There's a funny story about that and I thought some of you quilters might enjoy it. You know the Bible story where Jesus is rebuking the Pharisees for being like whited sepulchres- nice and pretty on the outside but inside- full of dead men's bones. This quilt is kinda like that. You see, each year, I promise myself I will not put a king-size quilt on the quilting machine during the month of December. (I made an exception this year and did Sarah's, but that was only because, well, I love her to peices, but also it made a nice excuse for all those lovely ladies out there who decide on Thanksgiving to make quilts for all 20 of their grandchildren, "No, I'm afraid I can't fit it in. I have a king-size quilt on the machine." See? That'll work.) They just take me too long to quilt and it gets me in a jam, every time. This is the quilt where I learned that lesson. I got all the client quilts done, so I figured it was safe to start this one- it would make a nice Xmas gift for DH- and myself. I guess I wasn't thinking too clearly, 'cause I put this on the wrong way. You can kinda tell in the first close-up picture that the quilting goes down the length of the quilt, so I should have loaded it on sideways- so I could make long runs instead of lots of short runs- which require a whole lot more time and work. I realized my mistake after doing the first bit of border, so I figured I was stuck and that I'd just perservere. I got about half way done and I ran out of December. So I finished the borders and took it off the machine. I got my January quilts done for the clients and put the quilt back on the machine.... sideways, this time. Well, they never stretch the same and now the backing on the bottom half has lots of little pleats in it- the kind you get with a regular sewing machine. So... you see, looks nice on the front, the back, well, dead men's bones.