And I'm finished....with what you may ask? Well, other than snow, the dreadful quilt that I mentioned in the last post. It's been done since friday, and leaving small remnants of our history all over the house! I had to vacuum a 6ft square area for over half an hour today to try and pick up all of the stray strings! Kudos to me who takes the filters out of the new vacuum to clean them....and then WAIT for 4 days until they are dry! Our house looked like a bar floor that you can eat peanuts at and throw them on the floor...except we had no peanut shells! I told hubby to remind me next time I want to go for a quilt to just go for the fancy one, because it couldn't be any worse than putting this puppy together! I have so many hours invested in this thing I'd have to sell it for a thousand bucks to break even!

So here are the pictures....

Doesn't look that bad here....there were 90 large squares of fabric, 45 large squares of batting....360 small squares of fabric, 180 small squares of batting...45 each leaves, flowers, and middles....over 12 spools of thread....and one borrowed sewing machine involved! Thanks so much to Pat for lending me her little slice of heaven for this project!

I've been collecting the fabric since I was pregnant with Sydney, after finding and falling in love with the pattern at Ivy Lane in Elkton. I finally decided to give it a go and buy the rest of the fabric the first part of October, so on to cutting squares. After agonizing over how big to make it the pattern was supersized for Sydney's big girl bed....and off we went! Around 20 yards of fabric, and TWO trips to Mills End in Sioux Falls I finally had enough fabric to make all the squares! The small squares are what you see above...

after sewing all of the mini quilts together it was on to the flowers....each part was individually quilted with a fancy stitch on each of the 45 large squares....anyone else tired yet?

When I was finished with those, and after I hunted the house numerous times for the pieces Syd took off with I was on to laying the whole thing out....

Somebody kill me now! It turns out the most difficult part of the whole process was now staring me in the face. I tried to be careful laying them out so no colors were butting up....but found out that's quite impossible, so I stuck with spreading out the flowers so none of those were next to eachother. Notice Syd's empty antique bed? I've been lusting after that bed since I was a kid....and thanks to the new cabin in Crosslake Bob and Sharon were willing to part with it....it was my only personal request if it was going to be sold that I get lucky enough to get it for what was then our unborn baby. LOVE LOVE LOVE that bed!

Back to the quilt....after all 90 of those squares were sewn together it was time to start cutting the seams so they would frey....second most difficult step! My poor hand still hurts!

TAH DAH!

Finished product....minus endless trips through the washer to finish the fraying. Our poor dryer had a workout the first round, there were strings flying everywhere when I took it out! The best part is it was finished before Syd turned 5! The un-sewn squares look like the quilt was going to be extra large, when in all reality, it just fits on her bed! Hubby is still not super impressed with the final product but it's growing on him....and will grow more when it stops shedding! As for Syd....she's in love!