Charms for My Sister

 This is another recent finish and this one was for my younger sister Diane. 

Way back in Spring 2013, I signed up for my very first charm swap.  Little did I know the appeal of swapping charms at the time and I eventually ended up hosting a number of Kate Spain charm swaps in later years.  I had no plans for them at some point I added a Disappearing Nine Patch pattern printout to the baggie they were stored in and put them on my project shelf.

Fast forward to 7 years later, I decided to use these charms for the quilt for Diane. When I tried to make color groupings for the blocks, I didn't like the result so I went searching for an alternate idea.  I came across the Falling Charms pattern and once I laid out the squares I had, I knew I had a winner. I had just enough of the right color squares for each row, with just a few leftover.

This is a really easy pattern to stitch up and the blocks were done quickly with chain piecing.

Within a few days, I had a finished top. It is 57" x 76".

Here is the "before", loaded on the frame to get fancy-fied.

I was really liking the effect I saw once I stitched the first couple of rows.

All finished and ready to be bound.

The colors are actually a lot brighter than in the studio pic above.

 I chose the Lida pantograph for this quilt to give it some nice soft swirls.

You can see the wonderful texture the stitching added better in this photo.

 I used Denise Schmitt yardage I had for both the backing and the binding.

I had planned to gift this to Diane at our nieces wedding in early June but she wasn't able to attend so I shipped it to her in South Carolina instead, getting her sworn promise first to not say anything or share any pictures yet because the other 2 siblings hadn't received their quilts yet.

This is her Yorkie who was already trying to claim it for himself the day it arrived.

We were on the phone when she opened the box and needless to say, she loves it.  It makes my heart sing to know that she'll be snuggling with it for years to come.

I have 2 more sibling quilts to share so stay tuned.