Finished - Ruby's Name Quilt

On Saturday Mr. G took Ruby to visit his dad.  I stayed home.  It was the first time I've been alone in my house since she was born.  I've left her before, of course, but it was always for me to go do something fun, and I knew she was safe at home with her daddy.  This time was different.  Mr. G's parents do not live very close to us, and he so rarely even puts her in the car that I had to make sure he actually knew how to buckle her in the car seat.  Yikes.  Needless to say, the experience was much harder on me than it was on her.

BUT

It left me with about 3.5 hours to get. stuff. done.  The first thing I did was do some spray painting.  Can't do that with her around!  But then I got my sewing machine out, and my buns in gear.  Waaaaaaaay back in April, once I was sure we knew what we were going to name our girl, I had this big idea of making a this quilt with her name on it, and taking a picture of her on the quilt at the hospital to "reveal" her name to the world (since we didn't tell anyone the name before she was born).

That would have been pretty awesome, had I finished the quilt.  However, she came a couple of weeks early, and I ran into TONS of problems making this quilt.  The biggest problem being that there is an error in the pattern.  It calls for one yard of fabric for the backing.  So that's what I ordered.  Yeah, it wasn't enough.  And it wasn't until I did the math (adding the dimensions of the front pieces) and read the comments on the pattern that I figured it out.  But I was still short fabric.

Then, my amateurish quilting skills, plus my mediocre machine that really isn't even supposed to have a walking foot, let alone quilt (it's like, a $60 one from Walmart), led to some frustrating pulling of fabric which left me even shorter on the back.

Short story long, what should have been a simple quilt turned out not so, and I've been too frustrated with it, and too busy with my girl to do anything about it since I started it last spring.  I've been itching to finish it though, so when Mr. G gave me the gift of time...

I knew just what to do with it.

I will admit, I didn't finish it while they were away.  But I did manage to MacGyver/repair the spot with the weird pulling, finish the quilting, make the binding, machine attach it to the front, make letter templates for the name applique (I just freehanded them on graph paper, rather than download the font in the pattern), and iron on interfacing and cut out the letters before they got home.  Not too shabby.

Over the course of the last few days, I hand-stitched the binding down to the back after Ruby was in bed.  Tuesday I managed to sew down the applique, and by Wednesday morning it was all washed up and crinkly, ready to use, just in time for Valentine's Day.  Yes, I decided that this would be my V-day present to her.  Making that my goal helped motivate me to just get it finished already!

There is something soooo satisfying about finishing a quilt.

She thought it was pretty cozy too.

Here's the back.  The color looks a little off with that pink, but really, it is lovely.  See that strip of coordinating fabric?  Yeah.  That's not part of the pattern.  That was added out of necessity after the pattern left me short of fabric.  Boo.  If you look really close, you can see my MacGyver spot too.  Don't look too close. ;)

The border, backing, and applique fabric are from Heather Bailey's Pop Garden line.  The middle is Kona Cotton white, and the binding is Kona chartreuse (I'm pretty sure, anyway).  I used white Gutermann 100% cotton thread and quilted it in straight lines about 1.5" apart.  The batting is Warm & White.  

Detail shot...  With some adorable baby feet:

Oh, yeah.  This is what happens when you're too busy taking pictures of a quilt, and not paying attention to a baby:

It's all fun and games until Mommy has to clean it up.