her quilt

I love quilts. I think I've always loved quilts, but as I've grown older, I've gained a greater respect, for the fabrics, the history, the talent of the quilters. I've written in this space before about a couple of my first quilts and how much they mean to me now. When Finn turned 4, I made him a car quilt. The search for perfect prints, all the sewing, plus working full-time (at that time), made that quilt an exhausting experience. I'm not exactly a natural at quilting either. All of that precise measuring and cutting of beautiful fabrics makes me a tad bit nervous, actually. But this summer, I decided that I would like to have a winter quilt to keep in the living room during the colder months. That one quilt turned into two. As I worked on those, Elizabeth casually mentioned that she'd like a quilt for her bed too. What? Request for a handmade? That's music to a mama's ear!

I thought about it, browsed Pinterest, perused blogs of quilters I know. This particular quilt caught my eye. I even found a tutorial for it here. Of course, since I was making a twin-size quilt, I had to measure, calculate, (and measure and calculate again) and adjust the tutorial to my needs.

With 2 Jelly Rolls, one in Moda's Lario line and the other in Moda's Snow, I found that the total length of strips fell just short of twin size. I ended up buying a yard of Moda's Snow to make a strip for the top and bottom to increase the length. As it turns out, I actually like the white framing better that way. I stumbled, quite accidentally, on quilt backing fabric in Lario's Lake Mist Garden Vines, which is the perfect backing since that shade of blue is very close to the color that Elizabeth's walls are painted.

Since I had those strips of white at the top and bottom, I decided to do a bit of quick embroidery in the top left and bottom right corners before I began quilting. The top left has Elizabeth's initials and the year.

The bottom right has a special little message to her.

After 2 days of non-stop quilting, (and refilling the bobbin a record 9 times!) the quilt was complete.

With the minor amount of backing fabric that remained, I finished Elizabeth's pillow. The embroidery is from Wee Wonderfuls' Book Club Stitchettes. (The same line that Finn's pillow is stitched from.)

I really love how nicely this pillow goes with the quilt. And the embroidery SO looks like Elizabeth to me. I can't wait to gift her this set for Christmas. (I hope she remembers she asked for a quilt!)

PS. Photographing a quilt is hard. Really, really hard.