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!)