Quilt finish (one year in the making)

That's right, this quilt has been woefully hanging on the back of our couch, stuck with safety pins and one rogue needle, while I toiled (or rather, didn't toil) over the hand quilting I had planned for almost a year. I posted about this quilt in my very first project post on this blog. As a recap, I had planned to give this quilt to my husband as a wedding gift. That didn't really work out. When I finally finished piecing it eight months later, I invented this grandiose plan to hand-quilt the piecing pattern. I got through a whole one block. In an effort to make this quilt more usable by finishing it, I made the executive decision last week to machine quilt instead. And now, my friends, it is finished.

Besides this quilt, let me recap what has been going on around here. My husband successfully defended and submitted his dissertation, my parents nearly sold out of what I had sewn for them (resulting in feverish restocking), we hosted Thanksgiving for the first time, hubby has 2 weeks left in school forEVER, and we recently found out that we will be moving back to Maryland in about a month (if you are keeping tally, this will be our third move this year).  Things have been...exciting.

Needless to say, there will probably be a shortage of handmade gifts coming from our home this year. Heck, there might not even be a whole lot of decorating here. But I hope you are enjoying the preparations for upcoming holidays :)