60 Years, Oh my!

The very first pattern that I ever bought was the one for this quilt. My Aunt N sent me a list of quilting websites and one night while browsing through them I found this pattern. I knew that my Mother-in-law would love the pattern as her life is deeply rooted in her faith (the pattern has changed slightly since I purchased it. My pattern did not call for the applique). She has been divorced for the last 25 years or so and raised my husband and his two brothers on her own. Her faith was one of the things that helped her through that incredibly difficult time.

I bought the pattern and began my hunt for fabric. The quilt was made in beautiful pinks and creams, which I loved, but she is more of a yellow and blue kind of lady.

So the pattern sat in my pattern box for a year or so before I finally found fabric that I liked. It is a mix of Storybook IV fabrics and other miscellaneous 1930's colored fabrics. I ordered the fabrics and they sat for one year in my fabric closet (yes I have a closet :) ).

January 2012 rolls around and I decide that I needed to get my rear in gear and start working on this quilt, so in the midst of Sorority Recruitment (I am an Advisor), I decided to start the quilt. I cut and cut some more. I do not even remember how many tiny squares are in this quilt. I did take some short cuts and did some strip piecing and made some 4 patches to make things go a little quicker. The piecing took a whopping 8 bobbins to complete! I finished the quilt in 2 weeks, spent another 3 days quilting it and 4 nights sewing the binding on.

I was going to take this to my long arm quilter, but I have become more confident in my free motion quilting skills and took this quilt on. By the time I drove to and from my quilter to drop the quilt off and did it all again to pick the quilt up, I could be mostly complete with the quilting. I am not sure what I was thinking because this puppy is large and it was heavy because I used wool batting. It took up my entire kitchen floor to baste it!

It was quilted in an all over meandering pattern using an off-white thread. The cross is quilted in a different manner using a variegated blue and white thread (it is actually the thread that I used to quilt her youngest grandson/my nephew's quilt). I washed the quilt to make it all nice and crinkly and to make sure that there were not any stray dog hairs from basting on the floor. As you can probably tell, this quilt is rather large. I had to stand back so far in order to get the whole thing in the photos!

I hand stitched the binding to the quilt. I like the way that hand stitching a binding looks. You can't tell from this picture, but the back is covered in puppy dogs. My mother-in-law loves dogs, but no longer has one of her own. Now she has a couple thousand to sleep with :).

I had some extra fabric so I made a few throw pillows and coordinating pillowcases to match the quilt.

Her 60th birthday is not until July, but we are going to see her in April. We decided to give her the quilt now, rather than taking the quilt and all it's accessories with us when we go away in July. If you are reading this post, she has already received her quilt.