Well, I finally finished the quilt for my new niece. First it was a shower gift. Then it was bumped to a second shower gift. Next I moved it to Christmas. Finally, I buckled down and finished it for my sister's birthday (last Sunday). I feel like I have been working on it forever, but it has only been seven months. FYI: These pictures are in reverse order.
I started the design of this quilt back in the spring. My mother-in-law bought me a bunch of the fabrics (mostly from the
Moda Daysail collection) for my birthday and I started the actual sewing shortly after that. I already have a Moda problem. So, it is good that no shops around here sell it. However, this may be my favorite line Moda has ever made. I am in love with almost all the fabrics and it was hard to narrow them down to a few for the quilt. I ended up giving my sister the charm pack and having her select her favorites.
The background fabric actually has all sorts of nautical terms printed all over it. They call the fabric grey... Originally, I had planned to have a more greyish feel to the quilt. Then the fabric showed up and it was cream... I ended up liking that better. I can't believe how much background fabric I used up. I ended up having to order even more of it. I think I used 2.5 or 3 yards of it. Crazy. Thankfully, when I reordered it was on clearance because it is the fabric that no one wanted out of the fabric line.
When I picked the pattern for the quilt, I didn't realize how hard it actually was, which is good because I probably never would have attempted it. It is from the Moda Bake Shop called
Stacks of Stars (
I first saw it here with Daysail fabric).
I really wanted to end up with the light blue flowers as the wide boarder. I thought it would be more girly, but it just didn't look right. It clashed with the greeny/teal anchor blocks on the inside of the quilt. So, while I love the dark blue, I never intended it to be the outside board. But I do love the way it turned out.
I also only intended on having two boarders, but it needed to have all three colors. The reds got lost without a thin pop of red around the outside. It was too distracting to bind it in red. It took forever to figure out what colors and where to use them as boarders. Thanks to my patient husband who measured and cut them all for me.
Also, thanks to me other sister who helped me figure out what blocks to put where. I send her pictures of the blocks before I sewed them together and we moved them around over text message. I really like the way the colors all ended up balanced (you know me, I love symmetry). And I love how some of the blocks pop out and some fade into the background.
Okay, enough rambling about how much I love it. :)
This is the back. Please, forgive the night time pictures. I was just about to wrap it up and I remembered that I hadn't taken pictures and the sun had already gone down. :(
My awful "handwritting". I need to stop free handing these. I should write them first with a pen and then stitch them. Oh, well. It is character.
Here it is being quilted. I stand up and quilt. I love it. Jared made me my quilting table over the top of our stairs. It is one of my favorite places in the house.
Here is the top just finished.
Here are the blocks just finished and I was trying to decide which anchor block to use and what the boarders should be.
Here are stacks of little blocks being turned into big blocks.
The first four blocks I finished. I was so tired of sewing these blocks at the point. I remember thinking that I would never finish another 8 of them.
I hope my niece gets many years of use out of it and can even have it when she starts a family of her own. It has won over the place of favorite quilt. Happy birthday (three or four months late), Julianna! We are glad to have a girl cousin that lives close by. I hope you like nautical themed stuff like your parents. :) And we all can't wait until you are big enough to play with us.
