ABC Quilt: It's finished!

After 2 years, the ABC Quilt is finally finished!

I wrote a little about this quilt here. So thankful we got this finished. It is so whimsical and fun! Little Man asks to see "his letters". We're keeping it in the family room so we can get plenty of use out of it. In fact, as I write this it's laying on our couch from where we were curled up under this just this evening. 

Love when a project is finished! And it checks off one of my 101 Goals (#30)!

Long time coming...

I had this idea for an "ABC" quilt for Little Man when he was about 5 or 6 months old after I was inspired by this quilt at Pottery Barn Kids (this is no longer available). 

I didn't want to replicate this, just liked the idea of an alphabet quilt. Being a quilting virgin at the time, my mother-in-law (MIL) helped me plan out a pattern and pick out fabrics. We looked for months because I wanted the fabric of each block to represent that particular letter. Here are some of the examples of the individual blocks as I was piecing them.

A is for Animals (on a farm of course -Little Man's favorite!)

I is for Ice Cream

Z is for Zebra

And this is the backing. It's a tiny white dot on green. Joann's sells this pattern in lots of colors & I love it! It's the backing to my Christmas Quilt as well, but in red.

I forgot to mention that it's big. BIG! I didn't want a lap quilt (maybe that's because I'm almost 6 feet tall and "lap quilts" just don't work for me - quite a selfish reason). I insisted it be big enough for a twin-size bed. A bit ambitious for my first project, but I like to follow the "go big or go home!" motto.

My original goal was to complete this and give it to Little Man for his first birthday. Well, I definitely didn't make that deadline. You see, I got the quilt top pieced together sometime in the fall after his July birthday, then my MIL helped me get the batting and backing pinned together and ready for hand-quilting. It only took a few blocks to realize that I did NOT like to quilt by hand. Thankfully, my MIL finished up quilting the letters by sometime this past spring (I obviously was in no hurry). It has sat in her sewing room waiting to be finished. We only lack a simple quilting pattern in the four corners and the binding. Oh the binding...the binding that I don't know how to do. I'm really not looking forward to it either, but it's something that has to be done.

Well, TODAY is the DAY! Little Man and I are heading over to spend some time playing and quilt binding. Hoping this quilt is finished soon so we can start using it! 

We can't head over until after lunch because MIL had morning plans, so we'll be enjoying a little time like this...love a lazy morning!

Sneak Peek...

A sneak peek of the wild & crazy quilt I'm working on. 

It's quite colorful, very scrappy, and lots of fun! :)

More Quilt Productivity

It's been 3 months since my last productive quilting time, but I've finally had a bit more productiveness in my version of this Raw Edge Circle Quilt. My circles have been cut out, sewn on the larger squares, cut into fourths, and matched up to make larger blocks. Now it's time to sew the small squares into one large block. It looks so random, colorful, and fun - I just can't wait to get the top pieced together! Hopefully it won't be another 3 months before that happens...  :)