Welcome baby Lucy...

A very special friend of mine has just had her second daughter, and I felt the occassion had to be celebrated with a quilt.. She and I recently made our first quilts together, and I knew she'd appreciate the work that went into it.  But the time between finding out she was having a girl - and our first visit - was only 2 days, so I knew I needed a quilt that was fairly quick to whip up.  I did some googling, and in the end I went with the ticker tape quilt from crazymomsquilts blog.

I have to say, I was a bit disappointed with the end result. Whether it's just my inexperience as a sewer - combined with my inability to forsee the end result of a quilt before I start it - but I had no idea that the end result of the quilt would be so messy!  I should have realised the edges of each piece would fray - and obviously that was the 'look', but I didn't see that from the original pics of the quilt? I washed it before I gave it to her and de-frayed it as much as I could, but I'd say it will continue to fray for a while.

So after umm'ing and ahhh'ing about whether to give it to baby Lucy, I decided in the end I would. And the new mama loved it - which made it all worthwhile.

The 'finished' quilt

The eagerly anticipated 'folded' quilt shot..

The showing off of the 'hand stitching' of the binding (It really wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be?) and it was nice to have something to do with my hands while I was watching Play School and other ABC2 entertainment each day

and the final shot has to be of the 'additional colour' Lola thought needed to be added to one of the squares..

Stick out your tongue and look 'shifty' if you're guilty of drawing on mama's Lola quilt with red crayon? Anyone?

How is the quilt progressing you ask?

The quilt top has been sewn together and pinned (with a lot of help from Hsuyin, and a little help from my daughter)..

The quilting has been finished (I'll admit - it wasn't my favourite part of the process, but it wasn't as bad as I was expecting either :) The new walking foot sure helped I bet)

And the final steps to complete - are attaching the binding and sewing my little message of love on it to Lola.. I was thinking "Dear Lola, Every stitch a stitch of love. Happy 2nd Birthday. Love your mama"

My Nana always puts a note inside anything she makes for us and it always says "Every stitch a stitch of love" so I'm happy to carry on that tradition. Although I will admit that some stitches included a small amount of frustration.

But my favourite part is yet to come. I am so keen to post the final picture of the 'folded quilt'... Everyone knows what picture I mean - it's the one where the quilt is finished and folded neatly and it looks just perfect. I've been surfing pictures of folded quilts on flickr and think this one looks the most like the picture I'd like to take:

image courtesy of crazymomquilts (flickr)

So stand by for my final picture of the finished 'folded' quilt.

ok, so i'm both proud, and not so proud...

things i'm proud of:

1. sewing 42 squares for Lola's quilt on the weekend
2. ironing after sewing each piece on (I'm not an ironer)
3. being precise and careful with my seam allowances and measurements
4. laying the squares all out on the spare bed last night and jigging around with the pattern
5. choosing a combination of fabrics that I think look great together (Amy Butler - midwestern range)
6. achieving this much sewing over 2 and a half days

things I'm not so proud of:
1. letting Lola watch a ridiculous amount of television over the weekend
2. letting my sick husband look after himself
3. letting my house become a bomb site
4. thinking while I was sewing that I would NEVER make a quilt for someone I didn't love (you have to love someone a lot to be that meticulous I think :))

So the squares are all done but they're not sewn together. I changed the pattern a little bit (the squares are each meant to be 12.5 inches, but I didn't sew the last row around the outside of each so they're only about 10 inches). Basically I was worried I was going to run out of fabric.

The next step is sewing the top pieces together, then starts the quilting. I feel like I've done the hard part already, but I suspect I'm probably wrong.