Winding Down a Year and a Decade

All over the social medias I am seeing posts about not only the end of 2019, but also of the twenty-teens decade. Whoa. That's giving me lots to reflect on. It had never occurred to me that come midnight tomorrow, we begin a new decade. This will be the 7th decade I have lived in, which sounds like a lot, but I only had three years in my first decade. That means, though, that this decade will see me turning 70! Yikes!

Okay, I am not here today to talk about aging and the passage of time. I come here to talk about quilts, by gosh, and I have one more finish to share before concluding this year.

A long while back, our sweet young friend Caleb handed off a bagful of t-shirts and asked if I would make them into a quilt. We love this boy - he's almost one of our own! - so of course, I was all in.

I made the quilt top back in May, and quilted it in November, and included it here in my November round-up. It was my 2nd quilt completed on the Tin Lizzie.

Finally, yesterday I did the binding. With all the Christmas madness, I just hadn't taken the time to get this final task completed. It was taking up space in my quilting room, however, so it needed to be dealt with.

The back is pieced. I thought I'd bought enough of the black and gold paisley, however, I was not able to stretch it enough to make it work. My solution was to grab the gray and black stripe - it sorta' reminds me of barbed wire - that I used in the cornerstones, for a midsection of the back. Worked like a dream!

And now it is ready to be handed off to Caleb. I think he will love it. That was the last of four t-shirt quilts I made for others this year, and now all are finished.

Remember all those t-shirt quilts??

Number 1 was the Ohio State Quilt I made for my husband's college fraternity alumni to raffle for scholarship money. We just drew the winner on that - one of the alumni won it. Interestingly, his son was a senior on the OSU football team this year. We will be sending it out today or tomorrow.

Numbers 2 and 3 were quilts made for a local friend who gave them as Christmas gifts to her son.

And this one - Caleb's quilt - makes 4. I'm sure we will be seeing him soon.

And now, back to that end of the year/decade business. With just 1 1/2 days to go, I have one more quilt top I'd like to polish off. The quilt-along I worked on through the Quilter's Planner is right on schedule. The December instructions called for completing the quilt top, and I have nearly done it. Only a border to add, so my intention is to go to work on that this afternoon. Easy-peasy. Below is the first block done back in January.

I hope you are finishing your year - and your decade - strong!!
Happy Quilting, Friends!