A forward, I’m starting this blog post *officially July 1st, 2016*  At this point I have found and purchased fabric, cut it out, laid it out and am trying to keep this to myself.

A little over two years ago I made a friend.  This normally wouldn’t be a big deal, but I normally have a difficult time making and keeping friends.  I guess I’m a lazy friend.  When you’re a kid, it’s easy.  You’re around each other every day at school, you’re around all the same people all the time and discover things together, so you’re almost forced into friendships.  They never really teach you how to make friends as an adult.  Thank Al Gore for the internet.

 

 

Heather’s a cool, blogging,  writer, tennis mom, stay at home mom and fellow puppy obsessor, and you know how sometimes you end up in a place on the internet and you don’t know how?  That’s how I met her.  It was really early on in my blogging time, and I found her blog, and I just followed along.  If I recall properly, I think I then stalked her on Facebook, like a stalker does, and I sent a friend request.  Eventually, I even weaseled her phone number out of her, because I’m just creepy.

We have bonded over our dislike of people, certain babies, odd families, you name it really.  We also talked a bit about fertility and infertility type things.  While I don’t have any kids, and thanks to Zika I’m planning on keeping it that way for a little bit now, I understand that it’s really awful to want kids and not be able to have them.  So when she told me that she was finally pregnant, I was over the moon!

I saw a picture of her nursery, and I saw a little deer head.  So I thought, okay, woodsy.  I can dig that.  While I have nothing against anyone’s baby room decor choices, I really like things that are kind of…I guess modern?  My spare bedroom/ future baby room is a really light grey color, and I plan on keeping it that way no matter if I have a boy or a girl in the future.  I have a lot of different baby room ideas up in that kooky head of mine, and those grey walls fit right in.  So just to make sure that I saw it right I asked said:

“your nursery is kind of woodsy themed, right?”

“Yes, woodsy rustic or if you prefer intolerably hipster”

I knew that I wanted to make a quilt, I mean, hello.  HELLO!?  So there is a quilt pattern that has haunted me a little, a plus quilt.  I cut one out without really consulting a pattern because I didn’t think I needed one.  BOY…howdy…was I wrong!  So I decided that I’m going to do it, and thanks to “for the love of George” I was able to do it.

While perusing Instagram, like you do, I saw the Fabric Shoppe promoting their Burley Beavers fabric.  So…just hold the phone.  #1, beavers, #2 those beavers have little beards, #3 they’re wearing tiny vests?!  #4 TINY LUMBERJACK BEAVERS?!  It took everything I could to just not hyperventilate.  I decided to go with the blue and brown color scheme, and I picked out some really nice textured woven grey fabric for the backing.  So when it came in very quickly, which I wasn’t even prepared for, I basically died from having to keep it to myself.  IT’S LUMBERJACK BEAVERS, Y’ALL!!  Even the wood fabric was cute!  (my throat hurts from screaming internally at how cute this all is.)

I cut this quilt out SO quickly because I couldn’t keep from using this fabric right away.  I even got this thing up on the wall really fast!  Which never happens!  I even had a long weekend here and there to sew on this quilt mostly undisturbed and man, this little guy went together so easily!

When I finished this quilt top, I showed Dax, because I can’t get an honest reaction out of Al…I mean he loves everything that I make no matter how awful it is.  Even Dax thought it was super cute.  Now I’m just working on how to quilt this little guy.

I decided to go with a stipple, and I think it’s super cute!  It didn’t take nearly as long as I was anticipating, so before I knew it, I was done!  The next step was to add the binding.  I’d decided to go with the blue flannel for the binding.  I got almost entirely around the quilt, then wouldn’t you know it I ran out of binding that I’d already cut and there was no more of that blue flannel pattern left.  I decided to look back through the scraps, and I found enough of the wood pieces to make up the difference, and I actually think it’s going to be really cute!

While I want to go ahead and stitch this down and get it shipped out, I’m actually going to use it as part of a secret project that I’ll explain later, so once again, I just put it to the side…for now.

Alright, now that that secret project is done (squealing), I got back to it!  Over the weekend I got over half of this quilt bound, much to Al’s delight.  Momma quilt binding means tv cuddle puppy time!

I’m looking forward to getting this completely bound over the next couple of nights and putting it to the ultimate test, the laundry!

It’s now out of the laundry, and oh my is it wonderful.  This backing fabric is actually a shirting fabric, so it feels really nice.  Now I just need to wrap it up, give it one last snuggle and mail it off to California.

 

I hope you love your quilt, little baby!!!  Congratulations, Heather & Nick!!  Until next time, happy sewing!