The Best of 2016

     Cheryl of Meadow Mist Designs is holding a best of 2016 link up where quilters can share their best blog posts or their best quilts or what ever they please.  I've been thinking about what I would like to share with you and I've decide to share my 5 favourite finishes of the year.  These are the quilts that I like the best and that I had the most fun working on.

     The first finish is this group quilt.  The blocks were made by the members of the small modern group in my local quilt guild.  You can read about this quilt here.  We didn't know this at the time but the pattern for the pick up sticks block was originally from a book by Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr, so my apologies for not crediting them in earlier posts. If you happen to know which book it's in please let me know and I will credit it. I added the beautiful blue sashing and quilted the quilt.

         I really enjoy improv and I had a lot of fun making this mini quilt from Score 1 of the Improv Handbook For Modern Quilters.   You can read about it here.  I made the quilt for the Toronto Modern Guild's display at Quilt Canada and it hung with the other challenge quilts.  Debbie of A Quilter's Table included this quilt in her newsletter The Scrap Basket in April 2016 so that was a fun bonus for me.

        This next mini quilt is probably the one I had the most fun with!  To make it I put fabric squares into a bag and randomly pulled them out in pairs to make 1/2 square triangles.  You can read about the process here.   I absolutely love how this quilt turned out, and I really should get it up on the wall in the sewing room.

     I like quilting along with others and I participated in 3 online quilt alongs last year and I managed to get one all quilted up.  I really enjoyed quilting along with Ruth on the Rainbow Rose quilt which she designed for the Modern Quilters Ireland.  Ruth shared a lot of information about colour theory and the resulting quilt is very beautiful.  You can read about this quilt here.

     This brings me to favourite finish number 5 for 2016 and the reason that this post is so late.  I finished this quilt  named "When Charlotte Burst Into the World"  yesterday and you can read about it here.  I enjoyed every part of the process in making this quilt  from designing the block to deciding on layout , to figuring out how to quilt it and finally to stretching my free motion skills once again.

          2016 was a wonderful year of quilting for me.  I received a great deal of enjoyment from  playing around with colour, improv and design and I'm planning to continue that in 2017.  I also worked on improving my quilting skills.  This is an interesting process because it requires me to accept where I'm at skill wise and to let go of my desire to be perfect. That's always a challenge for me.  I'm adding this post to the Best of 2016 link up, and as it's January 1st I'm wishing you all a Happy New Year!