One blessing after another...: Gracie’s Quilt

Over a year ago I fell in love with some fabric lines and decided to use one of them to decorate Gracie’s new girly room. She LOVED sharing a room with Ben, so I really had to sell the idea of putting the boys together and moving her out by herself. I showed her pictures online of a few choices and she ended up picking the one that was my favorite, too: Simply Sweet by Riley Blake.

While I had experience making bedding (I sewed the duvet and shams for the Master bedroom last Spring), I had never made an actual quilt before and I really wanted to try! I saved up and placed my order and felt all warm and fuzzy inside when this arrived!

That picture was taken in June 2013, for anyone interested in knowing the true depths of my procrastination.

Anyway, the fabric arrives and I hug it, smell it, pet it and whisper sweet nothings to it because it makes my heart sing. Then I set it in the corner of the guest room where it stared at me and mocked me for months. MONTHS, I tell you. At one point the song “Tainted Love” was actually emanating from within the crisp folds. True story. (If it’s not already obvious, I have an irrational fear of cutting into pretty fabric.)

Anyway, it took some sweet friends (Joan, Lori, you are my quilting heroes) and Gracie asking for the hundredth time “Mommy, when are you going to make my pretty blanket?” to get this show on the road. Finally I cut (and survived) and pieced and seam ripped and pieced some more and I landed here.

Oh my gosh – I could see the finish line! When I finished piecing it, I sent it off to be quilted at a little quilt shop in Keys, Oklahoma. The quilting is AMAZING. It’s so intricate and I wish I could take a picture that would really show it off.

I got it back at the beginning of April and I bet you can guess what happened next…. that’s right, the staring and mocking again. I had to add the binding and I’d never done that, so naturally I just stuck the whole thing in a corner and pretended it didn’t exist.

This past week I realized that I had t-minus ZERO TIME if I wanted to give this to Gracie for her birthday. I consulted the friends again and read 3 or 12 binding tutorials and last night I FINALLY got ‘er done. I texted Lori this picture and said, “Ok, I’m putting on my big girl pants and I’m going to DO THIS THING."

Then I pinned the binding on in the wrong direction and had to start over. Because, you know, I’m me.

I found the tutorials by Cluck Cluck Sew and Wasn’t Quilt in a Day to be the most helpful. I’m TERRIBLE at sewing by hand, so I just decided to do it by machine on both sides and it actually went pretty quickly. I finished it in one night. I couldn’t wait for the sun to come up so I could take pictures!!

Here she is, ALLLLLL done.

The binding came out really cute – I love the yellow.