Blogger's Quilt Festival

I know I am dreadfully late to the game, but I am finally participating in my very first Bloggers Quilt Festival that Amy is hosting over at Amy's Creative Side. I wasn't prepared to show anything the last time around, but I am now.

I am new to quilting. I made my very first quilt in late January of this year. Since then I have really discovered a passion for the art of quilting, and while I don't have a ton of time to devote to the craft any spare moment I can find is spent sewing. Since January I have completed five quilts (I have 4 more in progress), joined four bees (including two for charity), and participated in several swaps. You can safely say that I've caught the bug!

I don't have many quilts under my belt yet, but I'd love to share the Ruthie's quilt with you. If you're a regular follower of my blog you've seen this quilt before. I love making baby blankets for my friends. Before I started quilting I would crochet baby afghans as gifts when my friends were expecting. Now that I'm a quilter my friends are getting quilts.

I actually met Mike and Ruthie when I was in college. Mike ran a local political non-profit with my roommate Patsy. I wasn't really friends with them. They were Patsy's colleagues, but we always had an open door policy at our apartment and we would occasionally have visiting campaigners crash on our couch or we would host a Pirg Party at our place and that's where I first met Mike and Ruthie. Cut to ten years later when I started dating my wonderful and amazing fiance. He started introducing me to his friends, including his best friend, Ruthie. I thought she and Mike looked familiar but it took a visit from my old college roommate, Patsy, to connect the dots. It's a small world! And the rest is history.

So when Ruthie and Mike announced that they were excepting their second child in September there was no doubt in my mind that I needed to make them a quilt and it needed to be special. They didn't know what they were having, so I needed to make something gender neutral. Initially I thought I would make something with teals and oranges but as I was searching for fabrics in my favorite little quilt shop I found a jelly roll of the Hello Betty line and it called out to me. I already had my heart set on the design. Over the summer I fell in love with the Crazy Mom Quilts quilt-a-long but I was traveling for work all of June and July so I was away from my sewing machine, but I thought that it would make the perfect quilt for Ruthie. And by the way, this was my first time using pre-cuts and I must say I am sold! Love me some pre-cuts! Woot!

I picked out the yellows and greens from the Hello Betty line and thought the softness of the colors would be perfect for the baby. I kept the back simple, using just one panel of fabric. I was going to piece the back but I really fell in love with the backing fabric and wanted to let it speak for itself. But when it came to binding my blogging friend Natalie had an excellent idea. She suggested yellow fabric with white polka dots. And I do love me some polka dots! I searched high and low for yellow fabric with white polka dots and came up short so I settled on Kona Banana for the binding. And wouldn't you know we found some yellow and white polka dot fabric AFTER it was bound!

The best part of this quilt story happened well after it was gifted to Mike and Ruthie. We stopped by a few days after they took their new little guy home. (Yep, they had another boy!) Their older son pointed at me and said you're the one who made me the blanket and then took me by the hand to show me the blanket I had crocheted for him when he was born and put it together with the quilt I made for his little brother. I hope this little quilt makes his brother just as happy.