Blogger's Quilt Festival - Growing our home Quilt

In 2006, Joan (my husband's aunt, long time quilter and seamstress) gave me the best baby shower gift ever: 2 pairs of  Gingher scissors and a even-feed attachment for my old Singer and soon after my daughter was born, she helped my acquire my first "grownup" sewing machine, a Pfaff 1467.  

It was all a setup (just kidding) because in march 2007, she invited me along with her quilting guild friends to a sewing retreat. Three days surrounded by quilters, with a great sewing machine to play with. It was bound to happen, I tagged along to the local quilt store. Eye candy everywhere! Oh boy was I in trouble.

 I bought enough fabric to make a quilt for my hubby and I to cuddle together on the couch while watching movies. The quilt top came along without too much pain. I had received great advice on precise cutting and piecing. 

Then trouble started. The quilting part turned into a true nightmare, I was a complete rookie and even with good tips on setting up my machine for free motion quilting everything that could go wrong did: if the thread was not bunching, the fabric was, or the thread kept breaking. The top was 3/4 quilted but each time I tried to move forward it was just driving me crazy with frustration after a couple of blocks. That's when I decided for my sanity to stash the beast away.  What I didn't know was that the quilt had been the victim of newbie quilter's mistakes. It was now a UFO. 

Fast forward to last January. I started setting up my sewing studio in the newly renovated basement. That's when my UFO resurfaced, nagging me. Armed with my trustworthy seam ripper, I spent hours and hours completely removing all the quilting I had done. Then after researching quilter's blogs for information, I re-sandwiched it with a different batting and set out to start over. Success at last. The batting choice was the single biggest mistake I had made in 2007. After another hiatus over the sprint and summer, I finally completed it a couple of weeks ago, almost 2 and half years after cutting the fabric.

  

Each block has the outline of an acorn or an acorn leaf. I love the effect on the back. The finished quilt is 70x90 and will be perfect for the long winter evenings that are right around the corner, with a roaring fire in the chimney, a bowl of popcorn and a good movie, just feeling good to be home.