Wow...has it really been that long?!?!

Wow...I knew I'd been away from the blog for a while, but I hadn't realized it had been almost a full month.  Yikes!  Where does time go?

I've been working on a major project since July and the due date was Sunday (yesterday).  I've been working double time for several weeks now to get it done.

Over the summer, one of my private students (who was a school band student of mine when she was in middle school) asked me to be her Confirmation sponsor.  I'll call her by her Confirmation name, Cecelia (patron of musicians).  I was completely blown away and absolutely thrilled that she asked. 

At the time, I was working on my first quilt...a sampler I was making for myself to learn to quilt.  I'm about halfway done with the blocks for it (I'll do another post some time on my progress), but I decided to put it on the back burner and make a quilt for Cecelia.

I found a block I loved for it at Quilter's Cache and it was exactly what I needed...one large block (20 inches square when finished) that I could make the center of a quilt.  It was even more perfect because it's called God's Eye.  I took that block and drew out a design, using another small block I'd found on Quilter's Cache for some border pieces.  I needed three colors to make it, so I started by asking her what her favorite colors were.  Her top three were pink, orange, and yellow, in that order.  Now, if you know anything about visual design, you know you need some contrast to make a design work.  It's the same thing with quilting, so I knew that wouldn't work.  I asked what her favorite dark color was and she came up with purple.  I figured that could work and started hunting around the quilt shops in the area for fabrics that worked together.

These are the colors I came up with (this is the back of the quilt):

I pieced (put the pieces of fabric together to make the design) the God's Eye block by hand and then set it on point (attached large triangles to it to turn the block 45 degrees) twice.  The second set of triangles I had to do by machine because they would have each taken at least two hours each and I was running out of time.

I put the top and bottom borders together by hand and then did the long seams by machine.  I took it to a quilt shop and rented their long arm quilter for a few hours to quilt it (sewing the front, middle [stuffing, officially called batting], and back together).  I'll do a separate post on that experience, which, unfortunately wasn't all that wonderful...

My mother, God bless her, volunteered to help me do the hand stitching part of the binding (the edge).  We were working on it until 1 A.M. Sunday morning as it was and she accomplished twice as much of it as I did (she's been sewing lots longer than I have...I'm very slow, especially at hidden stitches, which were, of course, what were needed).  Here's the finished product:

I'm kind of sad that it's done...it was fun to work on because it went together so fast...lots of big pieces (that was the point...I knew I didn't have a lot of time to get it done).  However, I get to go back to my own quilt now, so that's exciting for me.  It was fun to give it to her, especially since one of her aunts and her grandma are sewers/quilters and we were able to talk a bit about the process and how it was put together.