Remember the NASCAR themed baby quilt I was making last fall? Well a happy, healthy baby boy was born to our friends December 16. I’d been told there wasn’t a rush on the quilt so I put it aside to finish Christmas crafting and to sneak in a last-minute request from someone for a handmade gift. 🙂
I’d been fretting about laying out and pinning the quilt and then quilting it and how so ever very long it was going to take me. I am really good at that, building things up into a huge hopeless matter than can never be overcome. So, Saturday since I wasn’t in the mood to even so much as leave the house (I spent all of last week in Dallas) I kicked myself in the dupa and got Chris to help me layout the quilt to pin it. We started to pin it when I realized that the plan to quilt from the backside meant I couldn’t pin from the front side so I put on proper clothes and rushed out to buy some spray basting. Best invention ever. When we got home Chris and I basted the quilt in 10 minutes flat.
Sunday morning I woke up at 8am (as usual, because apparently I am now old) and went straight into the office to quilt. By just after 10am I was finishing the last bit of quilting to ensure I had no more than 5″ or so gaps in the quilting and rushed off to yoga. Which, was kind of amazing to do after being hunched over a sewing machine for 2 hours. After lunch I cut the binding and attached it – finishing attaching right as my in-laws pulled into the driveway for a visit. This was perfect timing because our dear friend has a dog allergy so we were sending the quilt home with Chris’ parents to be washed before gifting, because it’s impossible to protect against dog hair in our house.
I bet you want to see some photos?
I love it. We delivered the quilt Monday night and the parents were quite pleased. I am quite chuffed that it was only a month “late”. That’s a better record than some of the other baby blankets that uhh were never even given, that I, uh, may still be knitting for myself as lap blankets now…
This will be a perfect play mat with the little race cars we gave him. He’ll be able to race around on his quilt while his parents watch NASCAR races. 🙂 Oh and as for the final dimensions it’s not quite a twin size quilt. It just covers the top of my full bed with no overhang. So it should do nicely on a twin bed.
I have two large quilts lined up for our home this year – the 1080 quilt (1080 – 2.5″ squares sewn together) and a Farmer’s Wife quilt. The Farmer’s Wife quilt may end up being a 2 year project. we shall see. It may just be that I need to just get out of my head and in front of the machine so my projects can produce themselves.
I’d also like to find a couple quick quilt projects as well for throw quilts.
What are you working on this year?