Sweet Citrus Bells

Holy Cow! I finally finished a quilt! It's been a while, so this is a big deal here in High-Fiber-Content-Land .  A long, long time ago, I received a gallon zip-lock bag filled with fabrics,trims, beads and other bits, also known as a "Baggo" (a bag-o-stuff).  And I was to make a quilt out of it for an unknown member of one of the online fiber groups I belong to (Hi FiberPirates).  I also sent in a bag of my own stuff and had already received an utterly fabulous quilt back.  So this quilt is long overdue.  I actually made most of it in January. As in January 2011. Ahem. But then it sat there for a long time, because it was done to a certain point, and it just wasn't working past that, and I was just plain stuck.  I hardly ever get stuck like that.  But there it was. For months.

As you can see, I got unstuck eventually and finished it.  I couldn't tell you how exactly.  Just the passage of time, or maybe the pressure I put on myself to actually do it, since I was enjoying the Baggo quilt I'd received months ago.  It got finished, all except hand-sewing the binding, label and sleeve.  That took me another two months to finally manage.  Not sure what the issue was there, but at last.  It's done, and I'm pleased with it, and I hope Dolly likes it too.
The whole quilt came about because of the Tangerine Sours Altoids tin she sent some of the embellishments in, it really got designed all around it.  And several times I almost pitched that idea, of having the lid be on the quilt, but as you can see it survived.  As an aside, boy was that ever fun when I was flattening it...My teenager came running, rather alarmed at all the racket, "Mom, what are you doing?"  I paused, with hammer raised, grinning "Making stuff."  heh.

The lovely heavy bells made a wonderful tinkling sound as I finished hand stitching everything.  Here you can see some of the leaf beads as well as the leafy ribbon that I used out of all the embellishments that came in the Baggo.  There were a lot in there to pick from which made it fun.
So now on to finishing more quilts...