endulge me if you will.............

as these quilts have been about 18 months in the making.  After falling in love with this quilt I became determined to make a quilt for each of my girls in a similar fashion.

I decided to go with pink and green blocks for miss A and yellow and purple blocks for Miss B, based on their favourite colours at the time. 

All inspired I rushed out to my local fabric warehouse and bought up any and every bit of quilting fabric in said colours, with little or no thought put into the choices I was making.  I even bought the batting.

 

I set about making my first blocks........................and then I discovered via the wonderful world of blogging, designer fabrics.

Suddenly I hated all the fabric I had bought.  I completely lost enthusiasm for the project. 

It all languished in my tiny sewing room, taking up valuable space for more than 12 months.  Every now and again I would pull some fabric out and make afew more squares, because I couldn't bare the idea of never really finishing the quilts.

Then afew months ago I read about Mel sending a quilt to Suzanne to be quilted. 

Light bulbs went off in my head!!!!!  I know Suzanne, I thought to myself.  We both meet up at the Craftroom from time to time.

I contacted Suzanne to see if she would be interested in quilting my quilts on her long-arm machine- YES, she was! 

That was all the inspiration I needed to f.i.n.a.l.l.y. get on with it and get the quilts done.  Truth be told, it was not only the fabrics I didn't like, it was the thought of quilting two single bed size quilts on my domestic machine.

After laying out the blocks the way I originally planned (pink/green and yellow/purple - don't worry I'm cringing right along with you) I decided it would look much, much better if I made both the quilts using all four colours.  As the girls share a bedroom this would also give the room more harmony.

 

A week and a half later (I know incredible or what after so much procrastinating) I had both the quilt tops finished. 

I decided to use some store bought bed sheets for the backing for a couple of reasons.  Firstly to save time and secondly to save money.  Worked well on both counts. 

I know this wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea, but seeing as though the fabrics on the front were cheap and nasty (let's be honest here) I didn't see the point in going all out on the backing.

After a few emails back and forth between Suzanne and I, I settled on an over-all design called Butterfly Garden for the quilting.  I dropped the quilts over to Suzanne, and a week later she had them both finished!  I was soo soo excited when I went to pick them up. 

I was totally overwhelmed with how beautiful they looked once they had been quilted. 

I cannot fault her work or professionalism.  Job very well done!  Thank you so much Suzanne. 

I decided to make pieced binding, using up all the left over scraps. 

In the 18 months which passed since I started these quilts Miss A has decided her favourite colours are now pink and yellow, and Miss B's are purple and pink. 

Lucky I mixed the blocks all together then.  Phew! 

I machine stitched the bindings on and hey presto, suddenly the quilts were - DONE. 

Miss A and Miss B are truly rapt with their quilts.

And you know what, so am I.