Hoots

I do adore Facebook.

It has allowed me to hook up & reconnect with people.

One person, for instance, is my sister's best friend from grade school, AT.

As if I didn't have enough quilts on my plate, I decided just after reconnecting with AT, that she needed a baby quilt for, at the time, unborn baby boy.

About the same time, Bo Davis had just published her "Dare to be Square" book.

In it was Hootananny, the cover art.

 

I thought this would be perfect.

So, DH & I pulled some fabric to make it:

Building part 1

Building part 2

The completed top

Once I had the top done in 2011, I thought I would hand quilt it in a continuous circle pattern.

Towards the middle of the summer of 2013 & I hadn’t finished the quilting.

At that point, I was barely 1/5th of the way done.

I decided that I was getting nowhere with it.

So out comes the frogger, aka stitch ripper.

Rip it, rip it, rip it.

Completely frogged and I run out of basting spray.

If you have read my rant from a while back, you know how important basting spray is to me.

Here we are in 2015, and the quilt is still in PhD status.

Whoops.

The loving tree

There are so many cute couples in my life. There is one in particular that has known each other since high school. They got married over Labor Day weekend. I almost had their quilt done before the wedding. Alas, my quilting got goobered up on the border, and I had to frog it. Thus, the hand binding I was doing had to take a pause. I took me just long enough to miss having the quilt done before the wedding.

The process began with asking what their favorite colors and shapes were. They said neutrals, nothing overly bright, with words or anything too funky. So DH & I dug thru my stash. What did I find? Some pretty tree fabric I bought when we were in Wylie for a week. Specifically, Beautiful Trees by Camelot Cottons in a fat quarter bundle.

Next, we looked at a ton of quilt patterns. Had a couple of ideas, but nothing was like "YES!" Then we pulled other coordinates to see what we could come up with. Not really enough to make any specific pattern, especially after we got to cutting. Just not enough for a wonky log cabin or anything. The light bulb went off! And this is what we came up with

Similar to a coin purse type of pattern, with sashing between the charm squares. The sashing was 2.5 inches. Nice & balanced, so I think.

Borders. Yes, it needs borders:

Now on to the basting. I thought I would try glue basting. Precisely, mixing water & Elmer's glue, misting on each layer of the quilt and ironing the water out. It worked. My ratio was 3 parts water to 1 part glue. I just didn't like the crispyness of the texture. This said I am going to keep buying basting spray until I have a frame to quilt on. 

The quilting is a fun swirly pattern throughout the top and the outer border has a nice loopy pattern. The binding is done by hand. I wrapped the backing fabric around to the front with about 1/2 inch showing.  

The gift was given and much loved.