there's a first time for everything

I decided earlier this year that I would only give hand-made gifts this year. This will hopefully save some money and provide a good excuse to work on crafty stuff. I have really taken a liking to quilting. The fabrics available these days are just incredible. I love color & pattern, so it's been lots of fun exploring this new-to-me craft.

Between my family and my husband's family, I have lots of folks to make gifts for. The idea is do make a smaller something for birthdays & mothers/fathers day and a bigger something for Christmas. The challenge with this is that because my business gets crazy busy around mid-October, I will need to have most of my gifts complete by then, which requires lots of planning ahead.

When I started thinking about what to make for my father and my mother in law, I knew I wanted to make each of them a nice snuggly themed quilt. For these, I was not going to find a handy pattern online. No, I was going to have to jump out there and create my first patterns. I found the whole process fairly simple. I had a vision for what I wanted the end result to look like, and just translated that into blocks/strips to achieve the look I was going for.

This quilt for my father will finish out at 48" x 72".

This quilt for my mother in law will finish at 60" x 60"