A finish!

Ok, so this isn't a new finish but actually my first ever finished quilt!

Isn't the clematis pretty?

I bought the fabric when I was pregnant with Anwen - five years ago! We didn't know if we were having a boy or a girl so we decided on a neutral spotty theme for the nursery. I found this fabric at my lqs.

I still have some in my stash, complete with selvage

It has spots in four different colours so I decided to pair it with four corresponding solids and a white. I bought enough of the spot to make some curtains too.

Now, remember, this was before I discovered all these wonderful blogs and tutorials on the interwebby so I started cutting it up into squares and sticking it to cardboard squares with Sellotape!

I still cry when I see how much fabric I used to waste on seams!

Unfortunately this is as far as I got. I really can't remember why I didn't carry on.

So along came Anwen

My favorite pic from that time - I look awful (after 53 hours without sleep I was allowed to) but we both look SO happy!

and the quilt was forgotten about :-( And I never got around to making the curtains either.

So roll on around four years and I was pregnant with baby number two. I would get tired so easily and was in bed straight after Anwen (sometimes I even beat her to it) but I wasn't ready to sleep yet. I needed something that I could do in bed whilst watching telly......I know! I sent Endaf up to the attic to retrieve a shoebox and there was my ready to be pieced quilt. I laid out all the squares trying to come up with a pattern. I decided that it worked better without the white.

So every night I could be found in bed sewing away, piece by piece, row by row until I had a quilt top! (Sorry - no in progress shots - 'normal' people don't take pictures of quilt tops). I was advised by the lovely ladies in my lqs that as I was planning on hand quilting I should go for a 100% polyester batting and a cotton quilting thread (Gutermann hand sewing cotton). I decided that as I'd gone for plain and easy on the patchwork I'd do the same with the quilting.

And then there was the matter of the binding. Due to the baby being upside down I had one or two extra scans but insisted that I didn't want to know the sex so it had to neutral. I didn't want to go with one of the colours that I'd already used but still wanted it to be quite bold. I toyed with the idea of lilac but thought that it would be to girly. In the end I went for a dark purple.

Now I'd never heard of double quilt binding at this point so went through the painstaking task of making single quilt binding. So much more work to make and to attach to the quilt. I'm afraid that I didn't do a very good job of the stitching which wasn't helped by the fact that I thought that I needed to use quilting thread to attach the binding and couldn't find a better match! This was a slow, slow process and I didn't really enjoy it. And that's where I left it because....

Yes hubbie is wearing the same T-shirt! I had this idea that I would change my Facebook profile pictutre from Anwen's baby picture to this one. I even had the same yucky nightie in my bag ready! What I hadn't considered is that all the tubes and wires that come with a caesarean meant that I couldn't take the hospital gown off let alone change into my own clothes :(

Along came Marged! Doesn't Anwen look proud?

Now anyone out there that thinks that they are busy with one child try having two! (how some of these quilty mums with five plus kids manage to sew at all is beyond me). Just the normal work involved with having two children was bad enough but feeding issues meant that I had to wake Marged (and myself) every two hours so finishing that binding was the last thing on my mind. So back to the attic it went.

Then this happened

Poorly baba

When she was sixteen weeks Marged developed bronchiolitis. It wasn't as bad as it looks but they wanted to keep her in to monitor her in case she got any worse. Only problem was the children's ward was full so we were shipped off to another hospital 90mins away from home.

So with no clothes to iron, no food to cook and no floors to hoover I found myself twiddling my thumbs. I sent Endaf into the attic again and by the time we arrived home we had a bound quilt.

I'm trying to vary my photos from the usual 'on the line' suspects

Now I know that this quilt is far from perfect but it was my first (well, first completed quilt. I have two quilt tops under my bed that started life long before this one!) and will have a special place in my heart for a very long time.

But at heart I'm a lazy girl so here's a picture of the back 'on the line'. The wrinkles?
The quilt was fresh out the washer and since it was on the line I took a photo. Did I mention that I'm lazy?

and it's been used. A LOT

We had a mini photo shoot on a rare sunny day.
(Like the dress? I'm going to have to try and find a picture of a super cute baby wearing it around 32 years ago ;-))

I was a nasty mummy and took the egg from her as soon as I'd taken the picture.

in fact it's keeping my legs warm at this very moment.

And that was it. I was hooked. And I know another little girl that could do with a quilt for her big girl bed.......

I've been following the Lets Get Acquainted Blog Hop and realised how important pictures are. I've tried playing around with some of the photos in this post. I'd be grateful if you could leave me some feedback. Thanks.

Linking up to:

this week with Aunt Marti at Thirteen in 13 and  Finish it up Friday with Amanda Jean at Crazy Mom Quilts