I ended up finishing this quilt before Christmas and I love it!  I love the colors and the fabrics.  I am super in love with the red polka dot flannel backing.  It is so nice to snuggle under.  It is still on our couch and I don't know that it is going anywhere soon.  (Kinda like the ribbon on the columns.)

I was planning on straight line quilting on either side of most of the seams but about 1/2 way across the first row I remembered how much I hate straight line quilting.  I feel like any wavy-ness in the line shows up a ton and I was wrestling with the quilt non-stop.  I didn't wear my quilting gloves like I normally do and wonder if that was part of the problem.  But I didn't think that I would need them with the straight lines.  Anyway, I quilted the bottom of each row 1/4 inch-ish from the seam.  

I was really frustrated with my inability to do the cool straight line quilting everyone else seems to do so easily and well, but a day later I decided that I actually liked it with less quilting.  I think sometimes we can forget how beautiful our quilts are just with the piecing.  It is nice to take a quilt "to the next level" with quilting but a quilt can be just as beautiful and enjoyed just as much with simple quilting.

I hope you had great holidays.  It has been bitter cold here and all of our quilts have gotten a lot of use.  But I can tell it is getting warmer because the cat meows at the door to go outside instead of me having to forcibly throw her out the door twice a day to do her business.  :)

And now that the kids are back in school there might also be more time to get down to the business of writing about some of the other things I have been working on!