Thursday, November 22, 2012

My best quilt ever

In 2007 my son asked me to make him a quilt for his bed.  The online quilt group I belonged to had just started a block of the month.  I hadn't even been quilting a year, but I told him I would make the blocks of the month in whatever color he wanted and in a year he would have a quilt.  He wanted red, white and black.  So that's what I did and I kept up with the blocks and after a year I had 12 blocks.  But he said he wanted the quilt to fit his queen size bed so I needed twice as many blocks.  So I used some of the free ones offered on the group site.  But he wanted it to hang down the sides so I figured I needed 49 blocks.  And then I thought it would be best if it was longer so that it could cover the pillows, which meant I needed 56 blocks.  This quilt just kept growing and growing and needing more blocks.  Finally I decided to just make 28 blocks (I had 24 already) and alternate that with 28 solid black fabric squares.  That made it easier.  But then I had to quilt something pretty in those empty black blocks.  He wanted a celtic design so I gave him some options and picked what he wanted.  But the pieced blocks were stars so the design he picked wouldn't work well so I got a different one for the pieced blocks.  But it didn't go into the corners and left a lot of unquilted space so I added some quilted celtic triangle knots in the corners.  Then I wanted to try a different border and corners.  So that was another quilting design -- all celtic.  When it was finally done, 5 years later, it was the best quilt I ever made.  I'm so glad it's done and I was able to give it to him for his birthday which landed on Thanksgiving this year.