to keep her warm

{ta-da moment}

{quilting}

{handsewing the binding}

{taking it for a test run while I do some knitting. yep, the quilt works just fine.}

 {finished. hooray!}

Finally, I can show you what I was working on for my mom's birthday. A quilt! My sister and I made this together. It was fun to collaborate on it (and to have someone help with all that ironing and pinning!).

I was so excited to give this quilt to Mom. It may have been the most excited I've ever been to give a gift. She loved it! And I love knowing that she's keeping the winter cold at bay by snuggling under a handmade quilt.

Although the quilt is far from perfect, I have good memories of making it with my sister, and I learned so much about quilting from the process. Mom and I made a couple of baby quilts together before Jude was born, but she did the bulk of the finishing on those. This was the first quilt I took the lead on and actually felt like I kind of knew what to do. There was lots of Googling, of course!

Our brick quilt was inspired by Alicia's rectangle quilt. We cut our fabric into 6-inch by 3.5-inch rectangles and used 1/4-inch seams throughout. We backed it with vintage pink flannel and used an antique-rose-colored fabric for the binding. I've heard people say that handsewing the binding is their favorite part (perhaps there's something meditative about it?), but I didn't find that to be true for me. It took a lot of chocolate to get me through that sewing, and at the end I had to scrub chocolate out of the quilt (oops!). I forgot to measure the completed quilt, but it's lap-sized.

I'm already looking forward to the next quilt I make! You can find my sewing inspiration here.

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Stay warm, friends!

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