Olivia's first quilt

It is FINALLY finished. This quilt was the longest quilting project in the history of mankind. Or so it felt anyway. It didn't take me that long to actually make the quilt top. It was the quilting that was insane. I like the way that hand quilting looks, so I have always hand quilted the quilts for my own babies. I think it makes them a little more special. Even though I could easily quilt them very cutely on me own machine in an hour or so.
So I start hand quilting this one, and very quickly realize the error of my ways. The best way to quilt this was to quilt in a place where I was quilting through like, 3-7 layers of fabric, just on the top, so not to mention the batting and back. Then there was the batting. I wasn't thinking, and I didn't get batting specifically for hand quilting, so even when I got to the places where I was not quilting through an insane number of layers there still was plenty of resistance. I got more than one hole through my thumbnail as I was pushing this needle through. So good riddance- it's done!
But it's it so cute! Like, you need to understand that these pictures just do not do it justice. Here you can see the construction. I got this idea one night at like 11:30 while trying to fall asleep. I was glad that I was able to figure out how to do it. As Jesse said, there will be plenty of pockets for goldfish crumbs and spit up.

The flowers are separately quilted as well, and then attached at the centers. I think that I attached them sufficiently that they won't be pulled off.

You can kind of see the hand quilting. The thread was a very close match to the fabric. But you can see the blue marker where I marked the designs. (That washed off by the way.) I quilted butterflies, dragonflies, flowers and swirls into the border.

And this one shows the back. So it's pretty much just an all around cute quilt. No matter which side you're looking at.

So tomorrow I get to start in on my next quilt. It's going to be a trip around the world. I have a goal to finish it by the time this baby comes. I have a little less than 4 weeks. I can totally do it. It's going to be smaller than this one. (And much less involved!)

Adrian's Quilt

Here is the finished quilt that we made for our friend Adrian who moved this past week. You can't even tell that I had to doctor it up! I really like the way that it turned out!

update

So the baby quilt is the slowest quilt in the history of the world. I'll tell you all about why this little girl had better love it more than her mother when I'm finished, but for now I'll say I'm ALMOST finished. My poor little quilting fingers have really had it this time, and the thought of picking up a needle this morning is painful, but I only have about 2/3 of the final border left to do. Then I need to cut out the little flowers that I have already sewn, and then attach them to the quilt. Bind it, and all done. My goal is to finish this quilt by Friday night. Saturday afternoon my friends and I are having a mini-quilting day of fun. Last time we got there at lunch time, and stayed until 10 or so. Today we'll start at lunch time, and be home by dinner time. Anyway, I'd like to start in on quilt number 2 for this little girl. I'd like to do a trip around the world with the same fabric as the first quilt. It should be super cute. I'll post pictures soon!

Call me the Quilt Doctor

So today I graduated from quilting medical school and performed emergency quilt surgery.

My friends and I have been working on a quilt for our friend who is moving. It is a picture quilt, so it's a little delicate. We've been trying really hard not to iron over any of the photos on the quilt, since that ruins them. We were doing really well, just one little nick. But then this morning I got the quilt out to sew the final border on, and I noticed that the same picture with the little nick- well, now it had a huge gash across the face. It was actually a good thing, because we were going to leave the little nick, but now we had to replace the picture, so it looked much better.

The major problem was that we didn't have any leftover fabric to make a new block. So I tried first to iron the whole thing off, but that didn't work so well. So I had to pick out the square. I was able to do it without too much unpicking. I hate unpicking seams more than just about any part of sewing, so I avoid it at all costs.

This is what the square looked like. Not acceptable.

I then turned over the ruined square, and I just pasted a new picture on the back side of it. It turned out quite well.

Then I had to sew it back into the quilt. It all was much easier than it could have been.

In the end, I managed to save the quilt's life. Recovery was quick, and it was in a box and out the door for our friend.

Now, we wanted to give it to her today, because it was the last time that the whole group would be together before she left, it was her son's birthday. The little technicality of the quilt not actually being completed, well, that wasn't all that important.

We ended up presenting her with the completed quilt top, and then this week we'll quilt it, and bind it, and then give it back to her. But it was nice to let everyone see the finished product.

Her reaction kind of speaks for itself.

This gives you an idea of what the quilt looks like. I'll post a finished picture when we get it quilted and bound.