Sew: a needle pulling thread

In January of 2008 I came home from my brother's wedding and started work on a quilt for him and his wife. Getting the sewing machine out with kids awake has not worked out for me, so I decided to make embroidered panels first and then sew them all together. I decided it would be a good first anniversary gift. I also thought it would be a good idea to give myself a year to finish it. I was only trying to be realistic.

In January and February I cut squares of fabric and gathered pictures. In March I traced the pictures on the fabric and began embroidering them. My box of fabric consisted mostly of blue, so I decided to embroider all in blue, too.





In April, May, June, and July I embroidered.



In August I finished embroidering because I realized I should have been half-way finished, and I was falling behind.



In September I started cutting and piecing strips of blue, sewing them (with a sewing machine) and cutting them to make strips of 2" blocks of assorted blue fabrics.

In October and November I laid out the picture panels a dozen different ways, and then I got frustrated and did nothing because it wasn't working out the way I wanted it to.

At the beginning of December, I realized I had less than a month left. I started spending every night after the kids were in bed sewing strips, sewing finished strips to the pictures, and then cutting random pieces of fabric to sew in between and make everything fit together.

In January I finished the top of the quilt, bought fabric for the back and a batting the same day, and then invited everyone I know to come to a quilting party.





Three quilting parties later I got my living room back and began thinking about the binding.

The first anniversary of my brother's wedding came and went, their sealing day came and went, and then my due date came and went. I got with it and learned how to finish the binding. Then I went to the hospital and had Rose, with one side left to finish hand binding. A week after I came home I finished up the quilt.

This is the scrappiest and patchiest of all the scrap and patchwork quilts I have done. This is the seventh quilt I have pieced and quilted, and the fourth quilt I've pieced completely by myself. I also consider it the most complicated quilt I've attempted. I used more graph paper and brain cells trying to get the numbers worked out than in all my other quilts (and probably every math class I've ever taken) combined.



This is the most "by hand" quilt I've made, what with the embroidered squares, the hand quilting, and finishing the binding by hand. When I started making quilts I never would have even considered spending that much time to do something I could finish in a fraction of the time on a sewing machine. My life has slowed down considerably since then.

This is my favorite square. I found this picture in a Friend magazine after I had almost finished all the embroidering and decided it had to go in my quilt.



See that blue swirly print with the yellow stars? I have a pair of pajama pants made out of that fabric in about 2001 when I was an assistant ward camp director and all the girls made matching pajama pants. That fabric has made it into three or four of my quilts. It's a Harry Potter print :).



The middle panel on the top row of the quilt is a drawing of the Rexburg, Idaho temple. All of the pictures I chose have a special meaning. This is one of the most obvious, and one of the most special to me.



Happy anniversary!