My favorite thing I've made (so far...)

Hey, today I thought I'd show you something I made over the summer.  Last summer (2009) when my daughter Emma turned 5, she decided she wanted to have an Under the Sea themed birthday party—not with Arial, but just a general ocean-themed party.  We have a pool, and it would be a swimming party and that literal water theme appealed to her.  Well, Mendocino by Heather Ross appealed to me, so I bought a fat quarter set in the 3 color ways and made goodie bags for the little girls out of some of it. 

     I promised Emma that I would make her a quilt with the rest of it to commemorate her birthday.  Her only design request was that there be a big 5 somewhere on it.  But as the summer wore on, I realized I was stalling…yes, I am a big procrastinator and that was some of it, but it was more than that.  I had cutter's fear!  I love these fabrics so much and they're expensive and I was afraid to cut into them, and realize I'd messed up.  I needed a pattern I was really happy with and sure of before I just went for it. 

   Okay, now fast forward till this June…a year later.   After I decided on a planned quilt that looked totally random (random doesn't work for me with prized fabrics like this!) I realized I didn't have enough fabric to make a quilt the size I wanted, so I was on to plan 2, and I will admit that I like this better anyway!  I searched flickr for Mendocino fabric quilts and this baby popped up:  





Photo from  www.aquiltisnice.blogspot.com/2008/09/zig-zag-quilt-kit-tutorial.html

So I followed this tutorial, of course changing out the fabric choices for what I had and the number of squares in a row/total number of rows to fit my amount of fabric, and I LOVE the final result!  The tutorial was easy to follow and this quilt really was easy to make.  Even if you're a beginner, if you want to make something to impress people—try this one out. 

See the little hands at the top...thanks for the help kiddos!

Here's the back, disregard the puckering in the lower right corner...you don't really see it, you just think you do!  ;)

   For the back, I decided to go with solids so as not to compete with the front, but I am a big fan of pieced backs, so I went with three colors that matched the front.  I matched up the colors with that section of the quilt, so the pink top is the same size as the pink zig zags, the yellow section matches the peachy zig zags, etc.  For the requisite 5, I originally drew a 5 on fusible interfacing and bonded different scraps from the leftover fabrics to the 5 and was going to appliqué it down in the middle of the back, but…I for some reason basted the quilt together before doing so and then quilting really messed it up, so instead, I just free-motioned a 5 with different colored threads onto some of my favorite scraps and added that to the back instead.  Don't look too closely at the binding on the back side, the backing got a little short in some places and I had to pull the binding all the way around, but overall, I'm very happy with this quilt.  I mentioned that it was far from perfect and my daughter said "Mama, did you try your best and make it with love?"  I said of course and she replied "Then that's what matters.  I love it and am so glad to have it!"  And isn't that why we all do this stuff anyway?  That always makes it worthwhile, doesn't it?

Label closeup

  I just running stitched the label on with the edges loose so that over time it'll be soft and cuddly to cover up with.  Plus, I was just really ready to be done by then and didn't have a turned-edge applique in me.  Does anyone else ever get project fatigue????