My Quilt: A Year of Spare Moments Stitched Together

For those of you that follow me on Instagram and Facebook, you may know that I've been working on a King sized quilt, completely by hand.

For those of you that don't know (and even those of you that do know), you may be asking, "Are you crazy? Why would you be doing something like that?"

Sometimes I feel crazy. But not long enough to give up this amazing project.

When I was younger I used to do a ton of embroidery, sewing, and knitting. One day, when I was about twelve, I had this amazing idea to combine all my skills into a single quilt. I'd make it for my hope chest. It would have embroidered blocks, hand knitted lace, and floral patterns.

There was this sewing machine shop I used to love because I sorta won a really nice sewing machine for them (sorta, because I didn't actually win the first drawing, but they did another drawing and I won that one!). I told the lady that owned the shop about my idea for a quilt and she gave me a pattern for embroidered block for my quilt. I saved that pattern by never found the time to make my quilt.

Until last year. I decided I was done having all these grand dreams . . . it was time to start doing some of them. My quilt would be one of those. And so I bought yarn for lace and muslin for backing and embroidered blocks.

It was February 21, 2018 when I actually began work on my quilt, starting by knitting lace strips.

I've made most of the quilt by doing a little here and there every time I have time to sit down, mostly during church and Bible studies, sometimes in the car, sometimes while watching a movie. I got a lot of the lace knitted while I was at my friend's house last year. 

About to go to a Bible study, and I have my lace! I know I look like I'm dressed awful, but it was cold and I had just finished a long day of cleaning houses. 

First lace strip done!

Watching my friend's daughter and knitting ;D 

If I knitted the lace strips steadily, it took about eleven days to finish one. I finished the last of the first three April 26, so it took me just over two months to knit the three of them.

My next project was embroidering the quilt blocks, using the pattern the lady had given me long ago!

As you can see, this took a little bit longer. I can embroider several blocks in a day, but I rarely have that much time to just sit. It took me a little over four months to embroider all twenty blocks. I used satin rayon floss and muslin material.

Which one is your favorite? I think I like the second to last best.

I'm always especially proud of my backs — can you tell which image is the wrong side? 

I like to say that green is the magic color. It makes everything pop! I only had one green to use among all the blocks, because the company that sold the rayon floss happened to only have one green available. But I didn't mind too much - the green ties all the blocks nicely together. 

Look at all that color that's about to explode into a basket of flowers!

When we'd go to visit my dad, I did a lot of embroidery in the hospital.

After I finished my embroidery, I went to ACFW, so I took a short two week break from my quilt. 

When I came back I bought my 100% cotton floral fabric October 4. But I was really REALLY  busy the next few days with a lot of housecleaning, so I didn't get around to cutting out the quilt blocks until October 14. I also finally got around to drawing my pattern for my quilt . . . 

. . . which made me realize I needed to knit another lace strip. So I've started that, but I've been mostly focusing on sewing the quilt blocks together. I was going to do more yellow, but then realized I didn't have enough. So where ever the pattern shows yellow and pink together in one block, it'll actually be pink and blue. So I'll have an even amount of every color in the quilt. 

I was going to machine stitch all the blocks together, but a lady from our church convinced me to do them by hand. "Why not make it all the way heirloom?"

So far I've got all the large blocks of two colors sewn together (that's eighty blocks), started and finished October 17 - December 25, taking me a little over two months. 

The blocks with four colors I started December 17 (I thought I'd finished the larger blocks, so started the smaller blocks only to find eight more hiding away in a bag). 

The small yellow and pink squares took me from December 17 - January 7 to stitch together, then the blue and green ones January 7 - January 31. I'm currently stitching those four colors together. 

For fun I counted how many stitches are in each block.

The two-colored blocks: 226 stitches. 

The small squares: 66 stitches.

So, I've been working on this quilt for a year. Do you think I've got enough done for that amount of time? Who wants to make a guess at how long it will be before I'm finished? I gave myself like five years, but I'm hoping it won't take longer than three or so. 

Are you working on any big projects? Or have a dream to do so? If you haven't started yet  . . . guys, this was all made up in time when I would have been sitting down anyways and needed something for my fingers. 

I don't have time to make a quilt. Yet, here I am doing just that. So can you!