as these quilts have been about 18 months in the making. After falling in love with this quilt I became determined to make a quilt for each of my girls in a similar fashion.
I decided to go with pink and green blocks for miss A and yellow and purple blocks for Miss B, based on their favourite colours at the time.
All inspired I rushed out to my local fabric warehouse and bought up any and every bit of quilting fabric in said colours, with little or no thought put into the choices I was making. I even bought the batting.
I set about making my first blocks........................and then I discovered via the wonderful world of blogging, designer fabrics.
Suddenly I hated all the fabric I had bought. I completely lost enthusiasm for the project.
It all languished in my tiny sewing room, taking up valuable space for more than 12 months. Every now and again I would pull some fabric out and make afew more squares, because I couldn't bare the idea of never really finishing the quilts.
Light bulbs went off in my head!!!!! I know Suzanne, I thought to myself. We both meet up at the Craftroom from time to time.
I contacted Suzanne to see if she would be interested in quilting my quilts on her long-arm machine- YES, she was!
That was all the inspiration I needed to f.i.n.a.l.l.y. get on with it and get the quilts done. Truth be told, it was not only the fabrics I didn't like, it was the thought of quilting two single bed size quilts on my domestic machine.
After laying out the blocks the way I originally planned (pink/green and yellow/purple - don't worry I'm cringing right along with you) I decided it would look much, much better if I made both the quilts using all four colours. As the girls share a bedroom this would also give the room more harmony.
A week and a half later (I know incredible or what after so much procrastinating) I had both the quilt tops finished.
I decided to use some store bought bed sheets for the backing for a couple of reasons. Firstly to save time and secondly to save money. Worked well on both counts.
I know this wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea, but seeing as though the fabrics on the front were cheap and nasty (let's be honest here) I didn't see the point in going all out on the backing.
After a few emails back and forth between Suzanne and I, I settled on an over-all design called Butterfly Garden for the quilting. I dropped the quilts over to Suzanne, and a week later she had them both finished! I was soo soo excited when I went to pick them up.
I was totally overwhelmed with how beautiful they looked once they had been quilted.
I cannot fault her work or professionalism. Job very well done! Thank you so much Suzanne.
I decided to make pieced binding, using up all the left over scraps.
In the 18 months which passed since I started these quilts Miss A has decided her favourite colours are now pink and yellow, and Miss B's are purple and pink.
Lucky I mixed the blocks all together then. Phew!
I machine stitched the bindings on and hey presto, suddenly the quilts were - DONE.
Miss A and Miss B are truly rapt with their quilts.
And you know what, so am I.
