Nate's big bed quilt

So, 2 years ago or so, all of my quilting friends finished their first baby quilts, and decided that they needed to then make big quilts for their kids who were moving up into big beds. They all had their second kids before I had Graham, so they were moving their kids out of cribs sooner. Anyway, since I didn't really have much else going on, I went out and bought the fabric for this quilt. When I was growing up, my mom made a log cabin quilt for each of us kids, so this is kind of like my legacy quilt. It was the pattern the my youth dictated that I make.

So I got the fabric, and started to cut the strips that I needed. Then well, life got busy. We were about to move, and I was about to have a baby, and well, it was just not a pressing issue. So it sat in a bag for a long time. Then sometime this winter, we decided that we were going to get Nate a big bed for his birthday. Well, that meant breaking out the fabric that I had started cutting, and get going on it. So within a few days it seems I had all of the blocks done. Then well, you all know the saga of deciding on the pattern I put them together with, and the result. Well, at that point Jana's mega quilter was broken, so I could not quilt it, and there was really no rush, because Nate's birthday is not until June. But then Matt and Melissa moved in with my mom, and she had a mattress she needed to get rid of, so we took it, and Nate got his bed a little early. One problem was that I didn't have the quilt finished. But Jana got her machine fixed, and she called me last week and told me that her machine was open and I could use it.

Let me tell you about the mega quilter. Well, I want one. Except I want like a 26" arm or something. Jana's is just a small size arm, so there is only about 6" of quilting depth. But that is more than my machine has on a quilt this size. (My machine has like, no quilting room on a quilt this size.) Anyway, it was totally fun, and easy too.

So I got it quilted, and came home, and did my borders, and got the binding done. Except that while I was sewing the binding on, something spilled on it, and it smelled really bad. Not that much fun to quilt on.

I took Nate to the fabric store to find some back fabric a while ago, and in an effort to pick something that wouldn't be too 3 year old, we picked these stars. (As opposed to a novelty print.) Anyway, Nate loves the stars fabric. I put his quilt up on his bed, and he went up to see it at bed time, and he got all sad, and said he only loved the stars, so we had to flip it upside down. Little monkey.

So I think that's it. There is the long story of this quilt that I have been working on for a million times.