daniel's quilt

Daniel's quilt is finished! I spent an ungodly amount of time pulling out the failed machine stitching, and then he and I got to work tying all the corners. It's not the prettiest way to finish a quilt, to be sure, but it's the quickest, and it is a part of the process in which he can fully participate, especially since I did all the cutting and piecing.

Note that the quilt is entirely symmetrical. Daniel designed the whole thing using paper with a 1" grid and coloring every square with crayons that more or less corresponded with the fabric squares we had to work with. He started with the center square and worked his way around, making sure he did the same thing on both sides as he went. When it came time to lay the squares out on the floor there were a few alterations to his original plan, but for the most part, we stuck with the original design, especially the yellow diamond pattern in the center.

Have a look at the backing I found; it's some kind of thick and very soft cross between chenille and faux fur. When you cut it, the furry bits shed like crazy, but it's warm and extremely soft and Daniel absolutely loves it.

Daniel is not in any of these pictures, by the way, because he spent the day stripped down to his skivvies, playing with a new toy he got as an early Christmas gift from my parents-in-law, who drove here all the way from North Carolina to visit us for Thanksgiving. Stuart and I had to do a quick photoshoot ourselves and it got a little silly….

            

             

Daniel is particularly proud of the center square.

He likes to play with the fancy stitches on my sewing machine. As machines go, mine is pretty basic, so the "fancy" stitches are about a half dozen variations on zigzag, but he thinks this is pretty swell and did a whole design of his own on that middle square.

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Ours has been lovely, full of family and good food and not a bit of shopping. That's just how it should be (in my ever-so-humble opinion!)