Gifting a Quilt

I’ve been very lucky to have a great mother-in-law (MIL). She is very supportive, has raised responsible, kind, independent, and wittingly humorous adults, and she is both the receiver and the giver of a fair amount of said humor. Because of the great human being she is, I decided that gifting a quilt to her was something I wanted to do.

My mother-in-law had talked about looking for a quilt for her bed for the spring season.  She couldn’t seem to find anything that interested her.  Her walls were a light shade of green, almost a pastel apple green. She wanted a bit of that in the quilt, along with lavender, some yellow, and she really wanted some white in there too.

The offer

When she was talking to me about it one day, I thought, “Well, heck, I could make her one and let her pick the fabrics and make it something she really likes!” And so the words came out of my mouth, she took me up on them, and that’s how I ended up gifting her a queen size quilt.

Now, to put this in perspective, 1) my MIL knows how to sew and has done different projects, so she appreciates the handmade-ness of a quilt, and 2) I’m not a quilting guru, so why would I offer this!?!

Can I really do this gifting a quilt thing given my quilting track record?

Let me give just a bit of history….  I started quilting probably 10+ years ago when I asked my mom if she would let me help her finish a quilt she had started in the 1980s.  You can read more about that here. We used this one to teach me how to make a quilt. 

I started my own quilt in 2009 and it is still an unfinished object (UFO), and that’s also another post you can read about here!

I did finish a quilt for my son in commemoration of his high school graduation a few years ago.  Bumped it right ahead of mine, and bam, got it done. A post for another time.

I pieced 3 more quilt tops with different intentions for them, but never actually finished the quilts, just the tops. I also made a few baby quilts for donation.

So, have I finished a quilt? Yes. Do I have a stellar track record of finishing quilts? No. After the comment sank in of what I had just offered to my MIL, I thought, “OMG, like I really HAVE to do this now!!” 😊 I also thought how cool it would be to be able to reminisce about the fact that I will have worked with my mom on a quilt AND I will have worked with my MIL on a quilt….in different capacities, but worked together nonetheless.

Let’s get to making this quilt

I got her color preferences and shades and pulled some fabrics from my stash and picked up a few at the store. She decided on these fabrics and also wanted a good bit of white.

I picked out a few quilt ideas on Pinterest that I knew I could figure out.  There are definitely some out there I’m not yet ready for and I didn’t want to mess this one up! We decided on a disappearing 9-patch with white sashing between the blocks.

If at first you don’t succeed….

I calculated everything on my own, “designed” the pattern on some graph paper, and went to town making measurements and calculating block size, sashing, border, and binding, bought the fabrics (though I had to go back and buy more), and got to work.

On my “first” attempt (yes there was more than 1 attempt), my squares came out to about 5”. When I started laying them out with all the different colors and orientations, I almost had a headache from the busy-ness of the blocks. Fifty or so blocks in I decided to scrap the idea, and go with bigger blocks.

I re-measured my dimensions (again!), re-bought more fabric (again), and made my second and final attempt.  This one turned out so much better.  I’m sure the smaller blocks would have been fine, but it just didn’t feel like what we were after and when you’re gifting a quilt, well, it has to be right. I will probably make a smaller quilt with those leftover blocks and donate it.  Though, by the time I get around to it, I might end up using it for a grandchild. LOL.

This second attempt was a success! I machine pieced the blocks and then kind of hit a roadblock again.  Since the blocks could be oriented differently and there were multiple color combinations, I spent hours trying to figure out the layout.  I laid them out on our ping pong table, analyzed, walked away, came back (multiple times across multiple days!), took pics, viewed them in different lighting and in different moods, and eventually came to the final layout.  Please do not think this was at all an easy part of this process.

Finishing it up

The sashing was next, along with piecing the blocks into rows and columns. After that was done I couldn’t find the fabric that I had wanted to use for the backing.  (ALWAYS, ALWAYS buy enough fabric for the entire quilt, INCLUDING THE BACKING!….not yelling, LOL, just making sure I said that very clearly….mostly for my future self!). Another minor setback. Ideally, I had wanted to use a 108” wide fabric since I really don’t enjoy piecing the back but I couldn’t find anything I liked.  I eventually found enough of the lavender, bought it up, and pieced together a back. I sandwiched it and began the hand-quilting. 

I had debated on whether to hand-quilt it, or have it done. I asked my MIL if she had a particular pattern she wanted quilted, thinking that would help make my decision on paying to have it done versus me doing it.  The complexity would be drastically different, as well as the turnaround time. She didn’t have a preference. Darn! Since I know my quilting self so well, I knew that having it done would involve me scouting out a quilt shop and I didn’t know whether I had set the quilt up right.  Knowing this, and knowing myself, I knew I wouldn’t pursue it…..for at least several years.  So off to hand-quilting I went.  Nothing fancy, just perimeter stitching.

The pride of gifting a quilt

I’m really proud of this quilt, and of myself! It was a challenge to “design” it from scratch, make the measurements, add in seam allowances, keep my brain straight between “unfinished” block sizes and “finished” block sizes, and just the discipline it took to finish it.  It also took patience, working through disappointment, and going back to the drawing board.  And my MIL L.O.V.E.D. it which made it all worth it.

Would I do it again?  Absolutely!  I’m hoping to utilize the quilting mojo from this one to re-focus my attention on finishing my quilt.  Have you ever done something like gifting a quilt?  Who was it for and what did you make?  Drop me a note in the comments!

Happy quilting!