The 7 Year Itch

Seven years ago, I began a quilt for my mother. She was here, visiting, for the birth of Connor and helping to watch after Gracie. At that time, I had just begun quilting and was so enthusiastic about the art that I took her to the quilt store and blathered quite a bit. She ended up purchasing the materials to make a king size quilt. I got the fun of making the quilt. I even took a class to help get it done, "Down and Dirty" style. The down and dirty of it was that it would be made in three panels to make the quilting of it easier.

The pattern I chose was smaller so I had to modify it. I spent quite a bit of time drawing and coloring to get it all just right. I cut it and pieced it together rather quickly. In fact, I recall having the top assembled within a couple weeks.

Look how small my baby is!

Shortly after assembling the top, I got all three panels pinned and ready to quilt. They sat pinned and neatly folded on my dresser for just about seven years. During that time, I have not seen my mother and have only spoken a handful of times. Life got busy and the hurt of our relationship kept this project on the back-burner. However, knowing that I had a retreat coming up and that I could never really emotionally move on until this quilt was finished, I set to getting it completed before retreat.

It took me a little over twelve hours to quilt all three panels. It's not perfect, but I think it turned out remarkably well. Once all three panels were quilted, I sewed the tops together. All that was left was to add the binding and hand-sew the back of the panels and the binding.

It's hard to see, but if you look closely, there are two horizontal lines, one toward the top of the picture and one toward the bottom. These are the seams of the three panels. In addition to hand-sewing them closed, I used mono-filament and sewed a few lines surrounding the seams. I did this both to secure the seams and to add a bit of decoration because these areas did not get quilted.

The binding was one of the dark purples. It was a nice finishing touch. All told, it took me roughly twenty-four hours to complete all of the hand sewing.

Voila! It's complete. It's so large, I can barely get it all in the photo. So large, you can't even see my couch!

Remember that baby? Look how big he is now. He celebrated his 7th birthday, today!

With the remaining fabric, I was able to make two coordinating pillows. They are not identical, but both are complimentary.

And finally, one more picture, in the best lighting I had, to show the vibrancy of the colors. It's certainly not a combination that I would have picked, but it turned out beautifully just the same. It is the largest project I have ever completed and I am proud both of the accomplishment and the craftsmanship. It was hard to let it go, but I did. I packed it all up, all the scraps, too, and packaged it to be sent to my mother. With it's completion, another chapter comes to a close and a weight has been lifted, sigh. I hope it provide years of warmth and comfort.