A Quilt Specially Made For Mom

My mom wanted a quilt for Christmas. Not a quilt I had made and decided after the fact to give to her. She wanted one that was made especially for her, with thoughts of her filling every inch of fabric. It took two attempts for me to get it right. At first I thought, sure mom, I can do that. And I thought about a design I had wanted to try (the pineapple block) and how great it would be as a scrap busting quilt. So off I went, and I loved it. About four blocks in I realized I was making and loving that quilt for ME. Not for mom.

So, it was back to the drawing board. Mom likes things to match. She likes symmetrical, and she isn't super big on florals. First, I found a fabric collection that would work. This is Authentic by Sweetwater for Moda. Her sofa is gray. Her chairs are cream. One of her kitchen walls is in this family of green. The pattern is from the Moda Bake Shop. It is called Etchings Quilt, which is named for the fabric collection from the original quilt. Mom has a throw pillow in her living room with a very similar design to this quilt. With those decisiions made, I was finally on the road to making a quilt that was truly for mom.

I love how you can actually see some of the pineapple block work on the messy table in front of the design wall. It took a bit of playing to get the blocks an a pleasing arrangement without too much of any one color in any given area of the quilt.

Once the blocks were assembled, it was out to the garage to layer it up.

This is a great picture of the dueling hobbies. My husband was working on a new bed as a Christmas gift for one of the teenagers. That reclaimed wood is so beautiful.

The quilting is wavy vertical lines using my walking foot. Each finished strip is two inches wide and there are three lines of quilting in each one.

When the pineapple quilt was in play, I had ordered a few different green fabrics to use for the centers of each block. One of those went very nicely with this quilt so it became the binding.

It rarely snows here in Georgia, and it is even rarer for that to occur in December. I am often envious of my fellow quilters who capture awesome photographs of their quilts in a snowy white background. This is as good as it gets here. All that was white was completely gone in a couple of hours. At least you can see there were some pretty flakes during the brief flurry.

Here are my teenage quilt holders on our second attempt at pictures. They are such good sports about holding quilts for me.

The quilt back is this fun news print. I purchased enough so that mom's quilt and my pineapple quilt can have the same backing.

And love. We should just add that to everything we say and write.

Of course a special quilt deserves a special label so I quilted a message along the edge of the quilt.

The finished size is 72 inches by 84 inches.

I think mom likes it. She asked me to come over and help her arrange it so that it looks nice and shows some of the front and the back while draped on her sofa. We'll do that next week.

I'm happy to have learned what it meant to really make a quilt just for mom.

Linking up to Finish It Up Friday over at Crazy Mom Quilts.