Blogger's Quilt Festival - Love Baby Quilt

This quilt has taken me forever to finish, but I am glad I got it done in time for the Spring Blogger's Quilt Festival!

I call this quilt the Love Baby Quilt because, obviously, it is made from a handful of Amy Butler's "Love" fat quarters.  Creative, I know :)

I started this quilt back in October 2012, following Elizabeth Dackson's Sliced Coins Quilt-Along with the intention of gifting it to a new baby girl who was due that December.  The quilt top came together quickly and easily...everything from choosing the fabrics, the cutting and piecing...things were going along swimmingly!  Then I attempted to quilt it and that is where all the trouble began.

I fought my machine on this quilt for months.  For some reason, when I started the quilting on this quilt, my machine decided it was allergic to free-motion quilting.  So I gave up and shoved this quilt in my closet where it languished for a few months before I finally decided to pull it out again and give it a go.

But after crossing my fingers, and much unpicking and swearing, I finally conquered the Curse of the FMQ!  The sigh of relief I heaved when I stitched the last quilting stitch on this little baby was probably heard round the world...or at least heard throughout the Northern Virginia area :)

However, by the time I got the binding on, I found myself very attached to this little quilt, probably because of all the struggle I put into it.  So much so that I have considered keeping it for myself.  (Besides the fact that it seems almost embarrassing giving a baby gift now that the baby is almost six months old!)

So, we will see where this little quilt ends up.  But as for now, I just love looking at it.  I love the colors. I love the patterns.  I love that it is finally finished. To me, it is just a beautiful little thing.  

• Quilt Measurements - 47x51
• Quilted by…ME!
• (Photos taken before washing.)

Click here to view my past Blogger's Quilt Festival entry

Also linking up here: Fabric Tuesday @ Quilt Story

Bloggers Quilt Festival - Piper's Pink Garden

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

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.