Not a july 4th Quilt

Hot on the heels of finishing my boyfriend's christmas quilt, I decided I wanted to make one for my Mom's birthday as well. I made her one several years ago, but used crazy thick batting because I didn't know any better, and she can only use it a few weeks a year! Right now she's on a kick of wanting everything to be red, so I went with a red and blue theme contrasting with a white background.

And then I started to worry that it would look like a 4th of July picnic blanket... But I forged ahead anyway! Using this pattern from Connecting Threads, I cut out a crapload of squares, stitched, cut some more, pressed, stitched, pressed stitched....

 It was really exciting seeing the pattern come together slowly but steadily into a recognizable design.

You wonder how in the world this is going to look like a star, and then two more seams and bam!

So pretty! The OCD math nerd in my had a blast measuring and cutting and making sure all the corners met up just right.

I was originally planning on adding a border around the whole thing to make it bigger, but once all the sashing strips where in place and I remembered that it only needed to fit a twin bed, I decided to leave it just as the pattern had written it. I had to move the carpet and coffee table and lay it out on the living room floor to layer and pin it, because my sewing room didn't have enough free floor space.

Once it was all pinned I used spare yarn to try and figure out a good design for the quilting. That part took way too long, because I just couldn't decide, but I eventually settled on this, in the hopes of accentuating the star motif.

Gratuitous picture of the binding because I'm super proud of how little of the hand stitches can be seen :P. Also because it took me 6 hours of hand sewing... An Alien marathon saved that from being completely tedious.

And it was all worth it, because look how pretty! I had to run it through the wash when I was done, because it was covered in cat hair and lint, and it shrunk up in a charming fashion that really helps the quilting stitches pop in person. And it doesn't look like a picnic blanket after all, thank god. My Mom loved it, and now she doesn't have to wait till the dead of what passes for winter here to have quilty goodness, handmade for her with love :).