I always have blogger frustration in the fall as I finish projects that I have been excited about all year and cannot post about them because, “What if the recipient accidentally saw?!”

When I gave this quilt to my sister, she cried. I was very satisfied. She has often lamented that she wished someone would give her a nice quilt. I was inspired by this quilt:

By a Blogger Crafter from across the Sea (I assume). I loved her modern layout and color choices. I also needed something to distract me from the endless flying geese and squares of the quilt for my dad, so when I got sick of working on the repetitious one, I would make a star from my guild’s block of the month for the one for my sister.

When the time came to piece them all together, I took them to my local quilt shop to borrow their design wall. In the end, since they are not open during my late night quilting hours, I laid it out on my bed, and it ended up having wide borders with nothing on them. That didn’t bother me, though, because the borders hang on the side of the bed.

I found out that one of my guild friends rents time on her machine for less than the shop I used last time, so I quilted it on her long arm. She was a wonderful teacher, and I highly recommend Judith Davis, of Primrose Creations. She took this photo for me with her iPad.

And here you can see the result on my sister’s bed, because I ran out of time to have a proper shoot with it before I gave it to her. Those pesky busy holidays.

My next block of the month for this year is this America the Beautiful Quilt, by McCall’s. They did it as a series, and then in a magazine at the end of the year they included the entire pattern, which is a great deal for the cost of a magazine. I have started working on it, but I am pausing for a little while because I am in the middle of a forest of blocks I can’t see for the trees.