Friday, May 18, 2012

Bloggers Quilt Festival - Piper's Pink Garden

Amy's Creative Side

This is my very first entry into the Blogger's Quilt Festival. I call it "Piper's Pink Garden".

Piper's Pink Garden
I really wish I had more (better!) pictures of it, but I made this before I started blogging, so no close-ups, I'm afraid.

It is only the third actual pieced quilt that I had made, and the first quilt I dared to do any real free-motion quilting on.  And my previous pieced quilts were very simple.  This quilt was really a step up for me.

For those reasons alone it is a pretty special quilt for me - but there is more to the story of why I love it.

A little backstory:

I currently live in the beautiful state of Virgina.  But before that, I lived in a military town in North Carolina for five years.  Duriing that time, I made some very wonderful friends.  Better friends, at least in my opinion, than I could ever dream of meeting anywhere else.  Maybe partly because we were all military wives and we "got" each other and the situation we were in together, but I think more because God put these awesome ladies in my life to help with the lonliness of being a military wife with a deployed spouse. Either way, I totally feel blessed to know them.

Anyway, my BFF in North Carolina is Jenn.  I won't go into all the reasons I love her, let me just say that I do.  Dearly.

When I found out I was pregnant with my youngest son, she fell pregnant also.  Our due dates were less than a month apart.  I loved having a best friend that was pregnant at the same time!  We could commiserate together on the pains of being pregnant and semi-spouseless.   

Unfortunately, at about 5 months, my friend lost her baby.  It was hard and I felt really bad that I was still having a relatively uneventful, healthy pregnancy.  Fortunately, it didn't damage our friendship and about a month after I had Finn, she told me she was pregnant again. 

The most horrible part, however, was that I was moved to Virginia just as she told me.  So I was not able to be there to help her through her pregnancy while her husband was gone for a year-long deployment. 

Once she was over the hump, and felt more confident that this pregnancy was going to go full-term, she agreed to let another friend and I throw her a baby shower.  I knew I wanted to giver her a personal gift, for her because she is a beautiful friend, and also for her miracle baby whom she had worked so hard to get here safely.  So even though I was still relatively new to quilting, I decided I would make her a baby quilt. 

Her quilt was the biggest quilting project I had done to that point.  I wanted it to be perfect.
I knew I wanted it to have some kind of butterfly/garden theme and looked online forever deciding on the perfect fabric (Dream On by Urban Chiks), which was just out of print at the time and getting a bit hard to find.  I started with a simple charm pack, and ended up scouring the internet to purchase fabric at least 3 more times to find the pieces I needed/wanted before I was happy with how it turned out!

Piper's Pink Garden

And  I was happy - thrilled! - with how it turned out!

  I thought then, and still do think it is such a pretty, perfect quilt for a sweet baby girl.  And my friend LOVED it, which made me happy, because, honestly, I was a little nervous to give it to her!  I wasn't sure if she would like it, and, as I said, it was my first time really doing an entire quilt in free motion, so my confidence in my skills was not the highest.

I love this quilt.  I love who it went to.  I love that I was able to put so much love and time and effort into it, and that the love was felt and received.  This is probably still, my favorite quilt I have ever made.

14 comments:

  1. That's why we quilt - to put love in our quilts and make happy the ones we love.
    I enjoyed looking at your quilt and loved the story.It is a beautiful quilt, I love its springy look.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Beautiful quilt in spirit as well as looks.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I LOVE this quilt. I think the colors are delicious!

    ReplyDelete
  4. It's a very happy quilt~

    Check out my blog if you can...

    Margaret Gunn
    www.quiltsoflove.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  5. Great fabrics. I love all the borders, just frames it so wonderfully.

    ReplyDelete
  6. What a sweet little quilt, and a very touching story. It's wonderful to have friends like that, isn't it? Thanks also for your visit over at my blog and for the kind comment, I really appreciate it!

    ReplyDelete
  7. wonderful story and love hte yummy colors
    Ann

    ReplyDelete
  8. un quilt très printanier très bien réussi

    ReplyDelete
  9. That's a beautiful quilt and such a great story of love between friends. I understand military life, deployments and friendships as the hubs retired last year after 27 years in the army. It's why I started quilting, his deployment and my need for a sanity check. Even now, I struggle to make real friends with neighbors b/c I know we are leaving this home for our "permanent home" in 5 years when all the kids graduate. I can't wait to set the permanent roots.

    ReplyDelete
  10. darling quilt and what a wonderful story--poignant but glad she had a baby eventually. great to have such good friends. we have friends from almost 35 years ago during our first time stationed in germany and we still love chatting occasionally even though we're across the country from each other. thanks for sharing and have a great day

    ReplyDelete
  11. I love this quilt, too. What a heartfelt story to go with this special baby qult. So wonderful to have formed such a close friendship.

    ReplyDelete

Your comments brighten my day!