a heart for Hadley

As soon as I pulled Baby M's quilt out of the dryer

in all of it's squishy crinkly glory

(which was right after 242 last Wednesday night)

I had an overwhelming urge to make my sweet Hadley 

her own squishy quilt.

Immediately.

For Valentine's Day. 

Which was utter foolishness.

When I couldn't get to sleep Wednesday night,

I got up and finished the book I was reading.

(which totally deserves its 5 star rating with 4,235 reviews)

But the idea wouldn't leave me alone,

so I grabbed my little graph paper notebook

and sketched a design

and calculated a cutting list.

I started collecting fabric around 9:30 Thursday morning.

Yeah. The day I was attempting to 'make someones' day(s)'

At 10:07
for fun,

I sent a picture of my stack of 54 fabrics to my friend Nancy,

because she just loves pink.

(not! ;-)

there are fabrics in this stack from Kacy's wallet, Any Which Way, Gramma Joyce's Paintbox,  my EPP, and even
Easter Dresses. and of course, a piece of California Dreamin'.  So much love and memories in a little stack of fabric...

I told her my plan

and she told me I was CRAZY :-)

I agreed -

but told her I'd done the math.

Sorta...

I reckoned that if I could make a 42x54 quilt in a week,

I could make a 39" square quilt in 5 days

which would give me time to get it in the mail,

and get it to Hadley by Valentine's.

She figured that sounded reasonable enough,

so she cheered me on :-)
(thank you, sweet friend!)

Even with all of my shopping

- and teaching kids to sew - 

I managed to get the fabric cut,

HSTs made,

batting pieced 

(I used a strip of bamboo that was left over from Mom and Bill's quilt)

the quilt laid out

(Lexi helped a ton!)

and the rows pieced and pressed

by the time we sat down to watch Alphas that night.

I pinned rows while watching,

and after I got Tyler tucked in bed

I sewed the rows together

and added the borders.

You can see that there are no borders, though.

I didn't like how they looked, so first thing Friday morning,

I took them off.

(note to self: don't sew borders on with a 1.8 stitch length!)

Which means that the quilt 

ended up being  36x33 instead of a 39" square.

In between helping the kids with their projects,

all I managed to do by 3 in the afternoon was finish pressing seams

and get the quilt basted

(I used the wall. Easiest basting job ever!)

I admit that I started telling the kids

I had my own (rather ambitious) project I needed to work on,

and this 

was why I was so hesitant to teach them to use the machine...

(The backing. 

Ya'll, it's delightful!

It's a deliciously silky voile by Lecien. 

I'd ordered a yard from QuiltHome once when it was on an excellent sale.

When it arrived, I loved it so much,

I turned around and bought a few more yards.

I think that's the only time I've done that...)

When it was finally my turn to sew,

I discovered something (again)

that I already knew, 

but wasn't quite bold enough to state as fact.

It's a fact.

My Juki will. not. FMQ quilt with Aurifil in the bobbin.

Or any 50 wt thread.

I really wanted pink on the back,

and I only have gray and white in 60 wt,

so I tried the Janome.

If you've been around here long enough, 

you know that she don't FMQ well anymore either.

(Which is so sad - she did the loveliest free motion quilting,

and gave me a confidence I didn't deserve 

back when I started quilting)

 The Janome was worse than the Juki,

so I went back to the Juki

and swapped out my bobbin for white 60 wt

and she played nice again.

I set up my slip and slide,

put on my gloves,

and got busy.

By the time I was able to actually start quilting,

I only had an hour 

before we absolutely positively 

had to start picking up the house for Pop to come home.

I free motioned meandering loops and hearts

like I did on Claire's quilt,

and when that hour was up,

I was pleasantly surprised to discover 

I was over half done!

We left my machine out,

but cleaned up everything else

(except for the huge pile of gray, blue, and now pink fabrics

that I've got to get put away!)

and as soon as we were done,

I got back to quilting.

In less than an hour,

I was done!

We were celebrating Groundhog Day Friday,

since kids had TKD on Tuesday evening

and there was no time to watch the movie then,

so I put up my machine and got busy on dinner

(pizza. I used a double batch of  bagel dog dough as the crusts)

(The kids were shocked that the mail ran on Tuesday,

what with the  big holiday and all ;-)  Tickled me :-)

this was Tyler's zombie groundhog. 

I'd planned to outline the heart with hand stitching,
but since I took off the border,
I didn't have an entire heart to outline,
so that was no longer an option.
So I decided to hand stitch a little secret message instead :-)

Since I've seen the movie over and over,

I didn't mind missing a little bit of it while I made the binding

(oh - I am so thrilled with how perfectly the binding goes with the back!)

and trimmed the quilt.

(Plus - I could still hear the movie...)

I rejoined the fam in the living room for Phil's 'final' groundhog day,

but as soon as the movie was over,

I went to the dining room and sewed the binding on

while kids got ready for bed.

I quickly pressed the binding towards the back on the front side,

then glue-basted about 1/4 of it down on the back

so I could start sewing it

while the menfolk and I watched an episode of Alphas.

Right before we walked out the door to head to NWA for the shower Saturday,

I finished basting the binding

and was able to sew on it for about an hour during the drive.

I picked it up again after the kids were in bed

and we were sitting down to

(another) episode of Alphas.

When Tyler told me he was moving towards bed,

I looked down to see that I only had about 8 inches of binding left!

So I told him to move slow... 

And then I finished it.

In three freakin' days!!!

I was so, so tickled!

Lexi made the burp cloth and bib, Lily made the elephant, and, yep, Josiah made the bear :-)

I started out Thursday morning

not really sure that

I'd be able to pull it off.

I was so unsure, in fact,

that I didn't even tell Tyler

that I was attempting to make Hadley 

a quilt for Valentine's

until I had the top completely made.

Turns out,

I could have put it in the mail on Monday,

but once the kids knew a package was heading to CA,

well, they wanted to make gifts for Hadley, too,

and I'd told them they had 'til Wed morning to finish them...

HadleyBear,

Mimi loves you so, so much!!

And I can't wait til you come see me in April :-)

Maybe next year, we can have a tea party

on your quilt...

p.s. your aunts are uncles are pretty crazy about you, too!!
p.p.s. So is Pops!!
smooches.

linking up with AJ and the finishers