Mom's Quilt

This is a special quilt for my mom.  She's awesome and is in need of some extra cuddly love.  Since I don't live super close by and can't see her as often as I wish to, I wanted to make her something that she could feel me in.  Weird, yes.  Do I care?  No.

I was on Pinterest and saw this great quilt from Red Pepper Quilts.  I knew I wanted to make a checkerboard style quilt the moment I saw that one.  I know my mom likes lots of colors so it made sense to make this one for her.

The multiple colored fabrics all came from my stash.  Yes, I have THAT much fabric!  And, it's ALL in those tones.  Nice and bright and fun colors.  I originally had a white with small colorful dragonflies that I was going to use as the alternate squares but then I realized that I had about 1.5 yds and I needed almost 5!  Wasn't going to work no matter how creative I got with my cutting.  So... off to Joann's I went in search of a white/neutral.  The first white I picked out had much smaller dots.  There wasn't enough on the bolt and there weren't any more bolts of it.  Since the cut counter line was crazy long, I ran back and grabbed this one.  It was my second favorite anyway.  I think it worked out better than either of the others would have.  Since I love making huge projects that I can't get a solid piece of backing fabric for, I knew I would have to piece it.  That said, I got 3 pieces of flannel and pieced the back.  I used black to do the binding and tied it with black pearl cotton thread.  I think the black binding makes it look like a frame.

To cut the squares, I bought a new die.  Yep, had to have it.  I got the 3.5" unfinished square die from Sizzix.  It made cutting all those squares (560 to be exact) so much easier and faster!  I'd say it took me about 2.5 hours total to get them all cut.  I had to cut from a chunk, iron, run thru the die cutter.  It went together pretty quick.  I spent probably 20 hours total on it.  Not too shabby.

Before I started this project, my darling almost 3 year old daughter decided to play with "the machine" and messed my stitches up something horrible.  I had to get it serviced.  :(  Turns out it had an issue that has nothing to do with her.  I'm not telling her that tho!  My dad came to the rescue with a machine that belonged to my Nana.  He took mine to a friend of his for service and loaned me my Nana's Babylok machine.  I really do NOT like that machine!  But, I persevered and made the ENTIRE quilt with it.  When I took the quilt to give to mom, I got my machine back.  My precious machine.  :)

So.... here's Mom's Rainbow Quilt

 Mom opening it

 The Front

 The Back