A Surprise Treat

My family is all getting together this Christmas for my parents' 50th wedding anniversary in LA (where they were married in 1958). So my siblings and children all drew names for the first time in a long time. I got my niece Erin. While pondering what to get her, and being mindful of the Handmade Pledge, I remembered that when she was here a couple of years ago for a week during the summer, she and I started her first quilt. I think she was 15, and I let her go through my scraps and pull fabrics she liked. She chose really soft pastel pieces, and I was surprised I had enough of those tones in my scraps for a quilt!

We got all of the half-square triangles sewn together, layed them out and labeled them, and then ran out of time. So when we drew her name I asked my sister-in-law if she could find the bag of blocks and mail it to me to surprise Erin for Christmas. Here is what I got:
Yes, that's masking tape you see. She didn't have a machine at home, and she must have really wanted to see her quilt finished. It cracked me up! She's a quilter all right. So I pieced them together, easily, because her blocks were done very well, added a border from my stash, and quilted it up this afternoon. I think it's beautiful, and I can't wait for her to see the fruits of her labors.

Plus, I got to get a quilt off of my list, yeah!!!