Anyway, the optimistic quality often comes through at times when it can be frustrating to others.  Case in point – when I’m 15 miles from the house (all suburban, not interstate, mind you) I’ll tell my husband that I should be there (home) in 15 minutes.  Considering that not a single road has the speed limit of 60mph, and that there are ALWAYS red lights, oh yes, and OTHER cars on the road, that “15 minutes” is actually 35.  Maybe even 40.  But its not that I’m trying to lie… its that I really think I can do it.  And I never give up 

When I started this quilt, much like every other quilt I’ve started, I’ve thought “I’ll have this one done in 10 hours”.   HA! Talk about the understatement (or most grandiose optimistic statement) of the year!!!  I think piecing the nine blocks took 10 hours alone.  Then piecing and adding the white sashing (2 hours).  Then cutting and piecing the quilt back (3 hours). Then sandwiching (30min).   Then {insert most idiotic quilt move to-date} creating grid quilting pattern with masking tape (2hours).  Then quilting (3 or 4 hours).  THEN THE TWENTY PLUS HOURS OF REMOVING SAID MASKING TAPE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

****please, for those new to quilting, don’t ever eveR evER eVER EVER use masking tape to grid the quilt.  Now, after the fact, I’ve heard that plenty of people have used painters tape.  I’m scared to try any tape at the moment, because this experience was so traumatic!

Picture the horrific sight of me sitting there for, yes – 20 hours- with tweezers in hand picking off the left over sticky bits from the blasted masking tape.    Then, even after I got all the visible sticky bits off, after washing, it was apparent by the lint attached in certain areas that there was UNSEEN stickiness left!  So, for another 3 or so hours, I sat there picking off the stuck on lint and the rest of the stickiness with the tape-on-tape trick.

And finally, after … let me add this up… 45 hours… my dad had quilt in hand and was grinning from ear to ear.  It was so sweet to see him so moved.

Happy Birthday, Dad!  I love you!  And Dad, please don’t get the idea that you weren’t worth the 45 hours… it was that I had expected it to be 10.  haha…

(i’ll be uploading the larger pics in a few hours!)

So I resumed counting yesterday on my 29 days and yesterday’s gift was a quilt to my mother-in-law.  Yes this was her Christmas gift, and yes, its over a month late.  But its still a gift because I worked SO hard on it.  And its late because my father-in-law had very unexpected open heart surgery the week before Christmas and it threw us all for a loop.  We truly forgot that it was Christmastime for about a week.  Needless to say, most Christmas shopping/presents were completely put on hold.  On top of that, my Mom broke her ankle the week before Thanksgiving, and  had to have surgery.  We had planned for her to come up the week before Christmas to stay with us for about 2-3 weeks while she was recovering.  It was a very crazy time.

My MIL, Diana, seems to be more and more into the bold and bright colors that are often associated with the Hispanic cultures.   I spent more time than I’d like to admit at the quilt shop, with a few employees, trying out various combinations of fabric.  I didn’t want anything too pastel-y, and I didn’t want it to be too dark with greens and blues.  So far, everyone I’ve shown the quilt to has loved the color combo.  I’m super happy with it myself.  I quilted it on the diagonal for the first time, thanks to much inspiration from Ashley.  If you look close enough, you can see where my straight lines weren’t so straight.  But you wouldn’t look that close since you don’t want to get pinched.  

The binding was kept simple – there was already so much color, that I didn’t want to take away from the quilt with yet more busy-ness.   Its Kona Orange.  Seems to really tie it all in together, don’t you think?  Finished dimensions are 70″ x 70″.  The pattern was based off of the “It’s a Rosy Day” quilt from Quilt Magazine in April 2009.

Anna requested that we not combine the triangles – such a good idea, as it will allow her to organize all of them just how she wants them!  Can’t wait to see the final quilt, Anna!

The entire quilt is sashed in a 4″ kona white, and I love the way it made the colors pop!  The binding was a vibrant orange that was used as some of the orange squares in the quilt.

The back was lots of my favorite Amy Butler Mist, Kona white, and the pattern piece (please forgive, I don’t know who made it – any ideas?) that was speckled all over the front.

For the quilting, this was my first foray into machine free motion quilting.  I’m really thrilled with how it came out.  I used a really vivid orange variegated thread by “signatures”.  I loved how non-linty it was.  I was so hesitant at first to do a bright thread for the quilting, thinking it would detract from the quilt itself, but it did so much to tie it all together – I’m so glad I took the risk.

Once it was all quilted, I washed it to get that crinkly goodness.  Everyone seemed really smitten with the quilt; the little girl across the street, Sarah, that watches our dogs for us offered to give it a home if Lainey didn’t want it 

Its 22″ square, and only took (gasp!) 4 hours to complete! 

This will be one of many in the queen sized quilt to come!

These little crib quilts really come together so quickly!

I’ve been so busy sewing, and not blogging. Obviously.

I’ve got tons of things to post, but I wanted to get this up right away, because I’m giving to Emily today!  This quilt started as a smaller quilt  (the stripes in the center)- a crib sized quilt for her son, James.  Now that he’s three (and a big brother, mind you) he’s claimed that he’s too big for the quilt and wanted a bigger one.  So Emily and I spent some time at Intown Quilters and she picked out the colors that she’d like to have around the original quilt.   The plan was to start with the original quilt in the center, then add a border, then add the large color blocks around it.  Since his room has a nautical theme, Emily thought it would be super cute to have sailboats in the corner.  I’m so happy with her vision of this quilt and ultimately, the way its turned out.

It was so fun to deconstruct a quilt.  It was really neat to see how another quilt was constructed.  It looked like it was hand quilted.  The original quilt was made my Pottery Barn Kids, probably by some woman in China, but she did a nice job!  There’s beauitful colored stitching between each block that we really wanted to preserve.  The only tough part to deal with is that the blocks of the original quilt, although they look similar in size, are all different… half inch here, quarter inch there – ultimately made it a bit challenging to deal with.

After getting the binding off, it was time to sit in front of the TV, watch a TiVo’ed Oprah episode, and start picking away at the quilting.

Once the original quilt top had been separated from the quilt, the fun began of figuring out the best way to lay out the new colors.

The sailboats were simply applique.  I used a satin stitich.  What I did NOT know, however, was how hard it is to applique sharp angles like triangles.  But, by the 3rd panel, I had pretty much got the hang of it!

We had picked out brown as a color for the panels, in addition to the red, orange, blues and green that you see.  But as a full sized panel, I thought the brown was too distracting, so instead I used it to “frame” the sailboat blocks, and that seemed to work out nicely 

As far as quilting, I did a simple rectangle, once inside of another, inside of another, and so on; as well as stitching-in-the-ditch around the beige borders and the sailboat panels.  I thought it helped to keep the lines of the quilt simple, and work to elongate the entire look.

Ta-da!  This quilt was originally ~ 35″ x 45″, and now its ~ 50″ x 70″, so its a really nice size increase that James should be able to grow into for years!  It was tall enough that I wasn’t able to really hold it up off the ground – I had to have Matt do it for this photo!  I think Emily did an amzing job picking out all the colors – it came together so nicely!   Oh, and the back is just a solid blue, the same color as the binding.  I chose a real dark blue so it wouldn’t show stains and wear as much over time, because I’m sure this quilt will get a lot of love