It took more than two months, but I completed the quilt I've been working on for my son, and I was so excited to give it to him. While I was sewing, he would ask, "It's a special blanket for ME?!?", so I thought he was going to love it. While he was at preschool, I went into his room and made up the bed with his new quilt, then told him I had a surprise for him when we got home. He ran up the stairs and into his room, filled with excitement, then stopped and said, "Um, I don't really like quilts, Mom."Sigh.
So, for the last week, he's been making nests out of his old baby blankets and throwing my quilt off of his bed. Then, after putting my son to sleep tonight, my husband came down the stairs and told me that he said, "I'm cold - I want my quilt, Dad!" Maybe all of those late nights and pricked fingers weren't a huge waste of time after all...
If you're looking for modern or whimsical fabrics, I highly recommend Fabricworm. I shopped from Etsy, but they have a separate website, too. Cynthia & Andrea are super helpful, answer and ship quickly, and Cynthia helped me immensely with the fabrics for this quilt, even putting together and taking pics of the ones I liked, so I could see how they looked before I bought everything. It's difficult for me to see separate pages of fabrics and visualize how they'll look assembled, so I can't thank Cynthia enough for that.
Here's a close-up of the fabric and the borders and binding I added. I started with a pattern for a lap quilt, and used that for the basic layout with the double border and changed the dimensions to make it a twin. I also bought a book, Better Homes & Gardens Complete Guide to Quilting, that had detailed instructions for rotary cutting the squares and the border/binding strips, how to attach the binding, etc. which was very useful, since I had just been winging it before. I'm still not very precise, and I can't sew a straight line to save my life, but luckily, I like things to look handmade.
