Phoebe Gets Her Quilt

It is a big deal for me to finish a quilt! I started Phoebe's quilt in October 2018 and finished 14 months later.  Now, each of my children sleeps under a quilt I made.  Oh, that makes me happy!

For Phoebe's quilt, I used crib sheets and scraps of clothing that she and we wore.  I limited the colors to pink, blue, and yellow, but I mixed in little exceptions to liven things up.

I am quite serious about sewing down my stash, so I used the white fabric I had on hand for the squares, which means there are actually two slightly different whites.  For a few weeks after I made this choice, I was ashamed; the church of my childhood believed in  matching as part of its religion. For years, I have been slowly growing away from this perfectionism. Quilting and mending are spiritual metaphors for me, I reminded myself, so these whites are my choice to "gather up the fragments and let nothing be lost" (paraphrased from Jesus' words in the book of John after he extended the little boy's lunch of  bread and fish to feed thousands of people).

Another use-it-up material did not work out so well for this quilt.  I bought pink yarn from the creative reuse store, making ties in the center of each pieced star with the goal of little felted balls.  But when I put the finished quilt through a hot wash and dry, the ties would not felt: the yarn was not 100% wool.  Cussing a little and refusing to drive and seek pink wool, I re-did the ties with pink perle cotton in my stash.

I like to work in a bit of machine quilting on my quilts, but it didn't seem to fit in Phoebe's quilt.  So I handquilted the whole thing in white perle cotton, outlining the stars and then highlighting them further with diagonal lines.  I am not fond of quilting that runs all over a quilt, but prefer quilting that works in harmony with the patchwork.

Phoebe's quilt pleases my eye.  She loves it, and so do I.  I am already deep into another patchwork project for the patchwork surprise I adore, as well as the pleasurable mental work of planning and dreaming The Next Quilt until I blink and find myself cutting fabric for it.  I'll keep you posted.