finish my quilt

Much to my surprise, I managed to not procrastinate assembling cygnet’s baby quilt. C and I tinkered around with the arrangement back on Thursday night, and tonight I assembled the top. Hopefully tomorrow I can baste together the 3 layers and will begin the fairly simple idea I have for quilting and tying it so that it will be finished before her little cygnet arrives. (Her baby is due 2 weeks after mine. But if my kid arrives, I’m pretty realistic that her quilt won’t get done in a timely manner to allow the baby to roll around on it and spit up on it.)

I’m wiped though. Standing and ironing seems to bring on more braxton hicks contractions. Though everything seems to bring them on now.

for the kid to arrive.

I could go on about the flaws, but the truth is that I meant to make a simple floor and crib quilt for the kid, so even with the corners I cut (or more precisely, did not miter), it’s a pretty nice quilt. At least the cat thinks so.

I have other quilts to finish, so I may add this goal back in, but I had this desperate longing to finish this quilt before she/he arrived, and I’m really glad I decided that I shouldn’t get bogged down in the details of bias binding in order to finish it.

I started this years ago. 3 maybe? Or more? It’s been sitting in a box needing the binding finished off for a long time. You can still see the yellow pencil marks because I haven’t washed it yet. (on the bright side, the pencil marks help you see the fancy quilting I did…) I did this mostly as a sampler, and I’m charmed by the 3d quality of the flowers. But I’m not usually an applique quilter, so I’d need a good reason to do these very often.

Quilting completed. Only binding left.

Then on to the next one.

I have a serious feeling of victory at the moment.

Finished quilting the squares. Only (“only”) the quilting around the edges (2 straight lines, following the piecing), then binding. I might actually finish it in April. _whew

The two most likely names for the new baby don’t overlap. It makes me feel odd to go back to calling her (him) Baby X. Nonetheless, I’m down to 11 smallish squares to quilt. After that I’ll sew around the edge of the border (on both sides) and then attach the binding (not yet made) and it’ll be done. Easily said.

Then I can concentrate on the color/design of the cygnet baby quilt (squares in squares seen in earlier posts). I rearranged them again on the sewing room wall on Thursday night, but still don’t really have a bead on what’s wrong or how to fix it. (Probably too many colors…Or too dark. Or both.)

I’m considering pulling the squares with orange outsides. This photo is a quick example. I’d make a few more squares, maybe emphasizing the turquoise and blues. After the citrus quilt, this one was looking scattered thematically- if that makes sense.

I finished the label last night at 1 am, got it washed, dried, and it was delivered to the baby’s mommy this morning. I forgot to take a photo of the lucky boy with his quilt. (I left the camera in a bag, in another room.)

Sweet boy- they’ve had him 2 days now. Several times I noticed clear preferences for his new mommy: grabbing at her while he was in someone else’s arms; looking at her for relief when crying. They’re going to be fine.

Now back to the other quilts. I quilted a tiny bit on Fee’s last weekend while in FL, but both quilts are for babies in their last trimesters, so I better get cracking…

I have a dr’s visit today where I have to wait for an hour for bloodwork (at least) and I realized I can work on the quilt. C and I got some done last night, but perhaps we’re not as driven as before.

We’re trying to get it done before the baby shower on March 8.

After Rambling Rose mentioned the color scheme, I’ve started considering the ‘Emergency Quilt’ as a citrus quilt instead. I just got the second border on. Hopefully the weather will let up and cygnet will come help me put the layers together tomorrow night. Otherwise we’ll bump to next week.