Baby Lou's Quilt

I made this top back in September for my SIL's first grandbaby.. a sweet little girl named, Lou.  Then I got caught up in an 80th birthday bash for my mom and shortly after that she fell and broke some bones (still recovering from that)... needless to say I got essentially nothing "quilty" done during the last part of 2011. 

Well 2012 is here and it is time for new stuff.. but first some of the old has to be finished up. Lou's was first on the list!

The Mad Quilter (a.k.a. hubby) and I got this one sandwiched up and off he went!  Simple in-the-ditch quilting, but on what a difference it makes. This quilt top is now a quilt!  A cute girlie quilt with lots of pink and green.  It will be headed off to Miss Lou this week.

There are 2 more baby quilts in the works.. one is quilted (again The Mad Quilter at work!) and ready to be bound. The other is waiting patiently for some batting.  And I am working again on my Snowman Faces quilt... finishing up the embrodiery so it can be quilted.

Then let the new stuff begin! (OK there are more UFOs to work on, but once these goals are met I am going to work on something new for a bit!)

"Belle"

A LABOR of Love....

Last January we had the threat of severe winter weather.. now let me remind you that I live in the deep deep South.. so snow flurries are severe winter weather to us!  Mention snow or ice and run home and batten down the hatches.. much like we do for hurricanes. I also live in a college town, so when this warning was released, the college sent kids home... that could go home. My son's girlfriend came to our house.. and she brought her roomie, Morgan, with her.  We all spent the next 24 or so hours curled up under quilts.. playing games.. eating fun food.. watching movies.. being silly. It was a lot of fun!

Morgan was intrigued by our quilting and some time later mentioned that she had a quilt top her grandmother had made for her back in the 90s.  But that was all she had.. the top. Could we finish it? Sure. A bit later the top arrived. I looked at the size of it, smiled at my wonderful husband (a.k.a. the mad quilter) and said "It's all yours!"  

He removed the tiny bit of quilting that was on it... removed the high loft poly-fil type batting... added a simple white border to prevent cutting the edges off the red blocks when binding... used a thin cotton batting and got it all sandwiched again (took forever!).. and off he went with the quilting. Straight-line.. in the ditch... nothing fancy... but sooo much of it!  He growled at times while working on this one. Remember.. no long-arm machine here.. not even a medium one.. a very basic Kenmore sewing machine from the 1990s... work horse of a machine.. but small throat! Once quilted, he bound it and then.. gulp.. we washed it. We had NO idea if Morgan's grandmother had prewashed the fabric.  I think we used 7 color catcher strips!  No fading at all. Yeah!

It really turned out lovely and I know Morgan is going to love it.  Her grandmother, whom we met in May, told us it was queen size. Maybe as a bedspread that reaches to the floor!  We laid it on our Kingsize bed and it covers the top and drops down on the sides and the foot very nicely. I would like about 4 more inches in the drop, but still.. it is HUGE.  

It was definitely a lot of work... LABOR... for Hubby.  But I also know he loved doing it for Morgan.  He is a keeper!

"Belle"