quilting rebel

 most all of my saturday was spent helping d2 finish off her baby quilts for the church auction. the boy quilt was quilted and needed binding. the girl quilt was basted, waiting for quilting. i had her do every part of the quilt she possibly could, including zig-zagging batting scraps together. she did not like that too much! when it came time do the quilting, i simply did it myself. teaching her to fmq was beyond what we were willing to do at this time. so we swapped - i did the fmq and she babysat for me. that was a fair trade.

despite the looming deadline, i took my sweet time and really focused on making nice curves and shapes on the 2nd quilt, the girl quilt. and if i do say so myself, this is some pretty quilting. my stitch length is getting more consistent, i back myself into tight spots less, and my curves are curvier. it was very satisfying. since i intended to buy the quilt myself, as i worked on it, i had fun imagining that one day one of my grandbabies will be snuggled up in this little blanket their mama made when she was only 11.

 and i did not stop to remove but one or two pins the whole time! i know this is bad practice, and, from personal experience, "dangerous", too. but i just don't like breaking the groove of stitching every few seconds to take out pins. so i've become rather expert at navigating around them. if i'm going fast, then the quilting can suffer, but if i'm slow enough, i can still get good shapes even with the pins in the way.

 oh, these nicey jane prints by heather bailey were so pretty to work with. i think i'll use this church flower print as a backing some time.

when i was done with the quilting, my daughter had to leave off playing in the water in the backyard with her friends to remove pins for me. she enlisted her friends' help and they were done lickety-split. i love listening in on their conversations while they observe her at work. most children really are fascinated by and interested in the magical process of sewing.

 i was sewing down to the wire right up until the auction. we were allowed to bring incomplete projects or goods to be finished within a certain time frame, but i really wanted to have these finished. however, i did not get the binding of the girl quilt attached on the front. i did complete the boy quilt by machine binding the whole thing (an upcoming post). so i  attached a slip of paper explaining it's almost finished. the backing, by the way, is a pink dot flannel. very cuddly for a baby.

so how did the auction go? very well. i got to come home with the quilt for keeps! that was my goal seeing as this is d2's first-ever quilt. it was a silent auction where the bidders had a window of time to write down bids on a record sheet. i went ahead and started the bid out well above the minimum bid to stake my claim, but a friend of mine, who is expecting a baby girl, was in love with it and bid me up. i upped that bid and talked to venessa about the quilt. apparently it's the exact shade of green she is using in her nursery. i explained to her why i "needed" to buy the quilt and agreed to make her another one for her bid price. so i paid a nice, high price for d2's quilt and we got even more money for the girls' camp fund from the commission. and i was already going to make venessa a baby quilt anyway, so it's win-win all the way around!

during the auction, i was talking to another friend about how i was determined to buy the quilt. she said, "so if i bid $150 on it, you'll up that? we could raise a lot of money here!" i told her if she did that to me, i'd stick her with the payment and steal the quilt. that would be especially funny since she has 5 boys.

what happened to the boy quilt? my m-i-l ended up with it! i set the minimum bid for the quilts at $40 since i wanted at least the cost of the materials covered. there were other, less-expensive services and goods offered, so when my m-i-l was the second bidder, no one out bid her. i have no idea what she's going to do with it since there are no more babies on the way or even on the horizon in our family, but i'm sure she'll find something to do with it. maybe it'll live in the porta crib or playroom at her house so grandkids can use it.