You have seen this quilt quite regularly on my WIP Wednesday posts but I finally get to share it as a finish. When I found out I was pregnant back in June, I always knew that Baby had to have a quilt of her own - a special one, made by Mummy, with love in every stitch. My initial plan did not meet with approval from her Grandmother so I went back to the drawing board. Lots of pinning ensued and eventually, in November, I came across this pin, and followed the link through to the free pattern, which you can find here.
The pattern was not an EPP pattern, but had some funny odd angles (not quite Y-Seams). EPP was, for me, the logical plan. By then we also knew we were expecting a girl. If she surprises us when she arrives and is a boy (highly unlikely - fairly obvious body parts are not visible on any of my five scans) then a girly quilt will be the least of his problems! Though Daddy may not appreciate pink sleep-suits, baby-grows and cardigans! I used a palette I'd fallen in love with from Design Seeds:
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The fabrics all came from my stash - I made the pink more peachy and the blue more blue (!) - a fabric for each of the 24 stars including: Cuzco by Kate Spain, Paradies from Art Gallery, Painters Canvas from Laura Gunn, Pearl Bracelets, Kona Solids, Pure Elements from Art Gallery, Floral Elements from Art Gallery, Summersville Spring by Lu Summers, Luxe in Bloom from Art Gallery, and Lily and Will (1). The background was a stroke of luck. You may know about my dislike for Hobby Craft but occasional discovery of amazing deals - this was one of them. And it was meant to be - I had exactly the right amount! With a bit of help I picked up border fabrics: Pure Elements and Luxe in Bloom creating a double border which I love. The backing is Moda Basic Dots in a lovely green and the binding is more Pure Elements.
It took a while for me to get my head round the block layouts, but I quickly found a rhythm and the hand sewing really means that every stitch has been made with love - that's what's so special about this quilt - it's also the first quilt I've made with this level of hand stitching. The only machine stitching was to add on the borders and attach the binding to the front of the quilt. The star points which fell outside of the blocks (7 points) are all hand appliqued onto the cream border.
The quilting had to be hand quilting, though I did wonder if I would regret that decision: if she had arrived early, it may never have got finished. But it seemed wrong to machine quilt it. I picked up a no 16 Fica Perle thread in peach (another risk). It was a bit slow to start with and although my stitches are quite even on the front, I had an issue in picking up all layers all of the time, so the back is not perfect. I will continue to persevere with my hand quilting though - it can only get better!
I'm incredibly pleased with this quilt and very relieved that it is finished before Baby arrives. So, Baby, if you were waiting for Mummy to finish your quilt before you made an appearance, waiting is up - feel free to come any time! Like now.
Come the end of the quarter, I'll be linking up this finish with Katie as my first (and possibly only) finish in this year's Finish Along
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