Aubrey's First Quilt

I know I haven't been around much lately, just too much life and not enough time.  I plan to make a bunch of posts this week so hang on to your socks....

This is my girl, I call her 'Mo'.

By 'my girl' I mean she is my clone for the good and the bad. {As much as I try to improve on my good, I am not delusional to think that the bad doesn't balance that scale.} I am fortunate enough that the quilting bug bit her when she was 9.  She may not be as eager of a quilter as I am but she will be.  It took her 2 years to finish her first quilt, but as with most things, she did it all the way.  She didn't take the easy route and pick out a panel to dress up. No, she didn't even find a pattern in the giant stack of magazines and ideas I have been clipping for years.  She sat down with a piece of paper and drew a block.  Then I gave her a piece of graph paper and said 'ok, now put it on here so you can make sure it works'.  She whipped that out with no problem too.  She doesn't have it in her to say "I can't do that". 

Here is a picture of the compete block that she designed:

This whole making a quilt thing started when she was rummaging through some scraps one day looking for some other project for school. She found a bunch of left over 3 inch squares I had cut to make this quilt.  Red is my signature color so I always have lots of that laying around and what goes better with red than black and white right?  It didn't take long for her to collect enough fabric to make a lap quilt.  True to form, she didn't want much help, she wanted to figure it out on her own.  This particular personality trait, I find to be especially endearing.  ;)  Once she figured that part out, it became a long and drawn out process of distraction.  This personality trait...not my favorite.  However, like I said, she is my clone so I can't complain too much...I have quilts that are 5 years in the making.  Anyway, those blocks turned into this:

Again, this is the stage it sat in for quite a while.  While on a shopping trip to one of my favorite quilt stores (which sadly turned out to be my last trip there because it closed down) I found the perfect border and backing fabrics.  When I brought them home and showed them to her, she was once again excited about finishing the quilt.  We put the borders on that weekend.  It is amazing to see how much her sewing skills have developed, I am sure it is simply an age thing and that whole 'doing it right the first time' thing is starting to kick in (again, good trait).  I am proud to say that even though the seams in the center are not perfect, the borders are, look how flat they lay! 

Didn't I tell you the fabric for the borders was perfect? ;)  The same black and white hearts that is in the outer border is on the back and the black polka dot is the binding.

She even tried her hand at the quilting.  I helped her lay out her pattern and load the quilt on the rack but she did the quilting.  She also did all the binding herself.  I made the hanging sleeve but she attached it along with the label.  Her final motivation to finish was to put it in our quilt show, which she did.  All the junior quilters that put a quilt in the show get a ribbon so she was proud of that.  After the show was over, she entered it in the county fair where she won a 2nd place ribbon in her category...she is even more proud of  that one.

So that's my girl, ain't she somethin'?