May Update: Quilting Edition

Joining in on Lee's Wednesday WIP! Happy Day Everyone!

I've done it! My very first official quilt! Now, I've made quilts before, but not quite official quilts. The difference being in the quilting. I've done tied quilts before, but never a fully quilted patchwork quilt. I pulled up my BGP (Big Girl Panties), took a few deep breaths, relied heavily on the kindness and continued encouragement of my sewing ladies, and I did it! And here, without further ado, here she is, my Rainbow Sprout quilt:

First of all, let me acknowledge officially how cool it is to have the friendship and support of a very cool bunch of sewing ladies, especially when you're starting out in the sewing/quilting world. Ella hosted an amazing retreat last weekend, and it helped push me over the edge into finishing this quilt. All I had to do was finish the binding over the weekend! The combined humor, advice, wisdom, friendship and encouragement from April, Ella, Jenny (needs a blog!), Marion, Pamela, and Sue (get a blog!! :-)) has been such a true godsend! Thank you! There's so much more to report on the retreat, but stay tuned for that in another post . . .  I'm on the road and couldn't take photos of all the goodies that came out of the retreat!

I discovered the marvelous tutorial for this quilt from Hooked on Needles. And when I say it's an entirely manageable tutorial, BELIEVE IT! It's a great first-timers' quilt. I think it's a great go-to quilt for a baby gift. I'm kind of all raring to go to make another. I made this for our nephew, Cameron Derek, and I was a bit teary packing it up and sending it off yesterday, as joyful as I am to have this wrap him in love and blessings! Most of the charm squares come from Emily's swap I did earlier this year, but I did throw in a few I Spy squares. I even cut into my beloved Heather Ross Munki Munki--both the gnomes and the VW vans (Cameron's dad is a VW fan)!

For the quilting I did what I'm calling a wonky geometric design, essentially square-ish, but deliberately not perfect squares. I guess we officially call those rectangles (from what I recall of Geometry?). I was originally going to just do straight line quilting, but I wanted to do something with a bit more movement in it.

So this, is my proud photo of work accomplished! I also, with TONS of guidance and inspired help from my dear friend Sue over our fabulous retreat weekend finally finished my pincushion/scrapbag (photos to come).

As for works in progress, Oy! So much in the WIP line! I still have miles to go on:
- My messenger bag
- The valance for my mother's house
- Dare try to make a scrapbag/pincushion for my mother-in-law
- Finish the baby quilt for our friend's almost year-old baby (should I just scrap it and do another Rainbow Sprout quilt?)
- There's so much more I can't even remember anymore!