No! I'm not pregnant. But I
*did* just give birth. I gave birth to a large sewing project that just happened to take nine months to complete. (Yes, one of the two projects I've been mentioning on here since January.)
Coincidentally, the recipient also took nine months to get here to planet Earth.
My little niece Henley was born July 11, 2015. Meanwhile, I was busily hand-embroidering Trev's signature and my signature on our respective pieces of fabric (mine from my
first ever make, and Trev's from an
ill-fitting Valentine's present).
I won't lie, at times it was really difficult work..
 |
| Like, say, when your dog is laying comfortably on the quilt.... |
But I managed to plow through and get it done.....two months late.
What else makes this quilt so special, you ask?
 |
| Grandpa Marshall's hockey jersey and Grandma Marshall's infamous "moose outfit" pocket. |
Well, I had A's parents mail me each a piece of fabric and scan their signatures over for me to embroider....
 |
| Grandbob's dress shirt and Granice's nursing training uniform (!) |
...and I had C's parents (my in-laws) bring me a piece of fabric and sign a paper for me to transfer and embroider.
For the quilting, I did a bunch of random intersecting lines, and then followed all of the outside ones three more times.
I also added in a few quilted triangles where there needed to be more quilting.
Trev and I had fun picking out different meaningful fabrics. The firetrucks represent the fact that A is a volunteer firefighter, Nessie is for their Scotland trip, an the labs are for their chocolate and black labs, Finn and Nevis. The rest of the fabrics either fell into "woodsy/camping", "cutesy animals", or gray, which was their gender neutral colour of choice.
I used a 6 inch quilting square to cut out 13 squares horizontally and 17 squares vertically. I used a half inch seam, mainly because I don't trust myself enough to use a quarter inch SA. This made the quilt approximately 65' x 85'. It is a baby quilt in that it is a quilt for a baby, but we made it big so that she could grow into it and use it when she is older (plus there are quite a few quilters in the family so we figured Henley would receive a few other baby-sized quilts).
Overall, I'm quite pleased with myself! If I had more time I would have continued the quilting lines, taken my time a bit more with the quilting I did do, and made my own bias tape, but I'm still really happy with it.
Extra special thanks to Trev for holding this up for me outside while I took what probably felt like a million pictures. :)
And yes, they loved it!
Also: you may be wondering what happened to Harley. Did he lose weight? No! Quite a few months ago we decided to adopt another dog, and so when
Sweet Dee came up for adoption (not her original name), we snapped her crazy self right up.
She has chronic dry eye, so she's not the prettiest dog, but she is certainly getting very comfortable in her new home.
That's it for today! I hope to make some T-shirts in the near future, and some sweaters for winter now that my machine is free. Hope to see you soon. :)
{
Sweet Dee does stand up}
