What I love...

Way back in spring, one of our friends asked me if I would be interested in making a quilt for a gift for his wife.  The gift was given yesterday, as far as I understand, so I am finally free to share what I was working on for much of July! 

When asked, I immediately said that I would love to make a quilt for our friends and then, once I considered that I may not be feeling up to such a large project later in pregnancy, I backed away a bit and gave an inconclusive answer.  Once we were back in Canada, though, I was feeling great and I jumped on board with the project.  And boy am I ever glad I did!

Remember these pictures?  For those of you who were wondering, no, the "J" was not a clue to McBaby's name.  It was for this secret project!  The green fabrics are the ones I used for the background.

You can't really see the belly here, but it did get in the way a little bit!  I was 29-31 weeks pregnant while I worked on this - the entire project took about 2-3 weeks.  (It was SO hard to not share!!)  I found that I couldn't sit as close to the table as I normally would have so either I was leaning my shoulders and neck forward toward the machine or else my belly was pressing into the edge of the table.  Neither was terribly comfortable, but I'm really glad that I completed this project in July as opposed to trying to finish it now! 

First I cut all the letters out of interfacing.  I then ironed the interfacing onto the back of the brown fabric.  Then I cut all the letters out again, this time from the brown fabric using the interfacing as a guide.  Once all the letters were cut out, I stitched around each one, attaching them to ivory squares of fabric.  Once all the letter squares were completed, I sewed them together, one strip at a time.

I added the green/blue fabrics to the ends of the letter strips to create strips the full length of the quilt.  Then I sewed the strips together, one on top of the other, to create what you see here (above).

(Nathan being my quilt stand)  Once I had the front done, I picked out fabric for the back (ivory flannel).  I layered the flannel, quilt batting, an Ikea sheet (for added weight), then the top.  Once I pinned it all, I tried quilting it with my sewing machine.  It became clear after the first 10 stitches that it wasn't going to work to quilt by machine.  I had a few days of being completely stumped as to how to finish the quilt.  I ended up tacking down corners in a grid pattern by hand, using small "x"'s.  This worked quite well.

I then cut and sewed binding from some of the leftover brown fabric.  I trimmed the raw edges of the quilt and then attached the binding.  There's nothing quite as nice as the clean, crisp edge of a freshly bound quilt... : )  It just makes me smile!

And the finished product!  I came up with the design when we were still in Fresno and re-worked it time and again until it was just right.  I did NOT want to start into a project this big and then realize once I tried to sew it together that it was calculated incorrectly!  Thankfully the entire quilt went off without a hitch...well, except for needing to improvise when it came to the actual quilting.  But for my first project of this size, and the first one using applique, I'd say it turned out just fine!  Will I attempt another one?  Not any time soon!  But perhaps one day, when our family is complete, I'll come up with something like this for us...