Kate's Quilt

So, a little more than two weeks ago my son Dan says to me, "Hey Mom, I want to make Kate, (his girl), a quilt for her birthday, will you help me?" I say, "Sure, when's her birthday?" He says, "April 21st!" Now, I know I might look like wonder woman, (that was supposed to be funny!), but I guess we can try to pull this off. He sends me a picture of some quilt blocks on my phone. They were stack 'n wack blocks that looked easy enough, and I thought okay this won't be so bad. I send him to the quilt shop to pick out fabric, then he came home with his bag of goodies and sketchbook. He had drawn pieced blocks to alternate with the stack 'n wack blocks. I thought, "Ummmmmmm, how is this going to look?" Well, we got busy. We worked for three nights, into the weeeee, and I mean weeee hours. The pieced blocks were two-color blocks. A white tone on tone, and a brown fabric with polka dots. The fabrics he chose for the other blocks needed a little brightening up, so I sent him to my studio to pick out some batiks, and brighter fabrics.

I wasn't pleased with the way the stack 'n wack blocks looked against the pieced blocks, so we decided to cut them down to 10 1/2", and frame them with a 1" border. That really kicked things up a notch! One of Kate's favorite characters is Tink. Dan bought an applique, so we added her to one of the blocks. I probably should have turned her to make it look like she was flying, instead of her looking all cheesecake here!!

The night before her birthday, Dan came home and we handstitched the binding on together. It was a striped fabric that I cut on the bias. I like the way that looks on a binding.

We got it done in time for the big day. She loved it. Included in the card he gave her was the story that I've always told my kids. Whenever I gave them a quilt, I told them that when mom's not around, and you need a hug, just wrap that quilt around you, and it will be as close to mom as you can get at the moment. To them a quilt is a hug. Don't you just love it!