Leah's Quilt-Part I

I've mentioned before that I have a shelf in my studio dedicated to storing works-in-progress. Most of them are of no particular origin, nor meant for any particular destination. Therefore, the projects' lingering status in purgatory doesn't weigh on me too much, other than my wanting to buy more fabric- which I won't allow myself to do until some of what I have has been used. For all you quilters and textiliphiles out there, you know just how hard that is. There is one project, however, in the studio right now, that is approximately 4 1/2 months overdue for completion. That is the baby quilt for my second child, Leah.

Ok, I'll cut myself a bit of slack. I wanted to choose the fabric with my husband, and we couldn't do that until I was so pregnant it was nearly impossible to sit at my machine. But the blocks have been complete since about two weeks before she was born. They've even been nicely arranged on my batting board all ready to go since then. This picture is dated April 29th.

Leah was content for about four months to just lay on her back and make some noise, mostly pleasant and calm. She recently began to rock her tummy time, and just rolled over for the first time two days ago. I figure I'd better get this blanket finished if there's any hope of her actually playing on it before she goes mobile. Here is an account of the quilt top construction to date. And, as I won't allow myself to buy any new fabric until some projects are done, so I won't allow myself to post about anything else until this particular quilt is complete.

1. Carefully recheck each block for square-ness- this is definitely a measure twice, cut once situation.
2. Put two blocks, right sides together, with the sides lined up. I hate pinning, so I rarely do it, but make sure these edges remain aligned.
3. Sew a 1/4 inch seam and press open. In addition to pinning, I also hate pressing seams open. I know I'm not the only quilter to avoid this step if possible. But I want this quilt to be EXTRA nice, so I'm going the extra, if annoying, mile.
4. Repeat for the entire horizontal row of blocks. Press the row flat.

Now I've got three out of five rows complete.

Signing off to go sew the last two. Wish me luck.