This was the first solo quilt I worked on; began it in late August/early September 2005 and had it finished, quilted and bound in time to give it to my Mum for Christmas. I was surprised to find I really enjoyed the hand quilting more than I thought I would — I watched the entire Cadfael series with Derek Jacobi while stitching!

No idea what the measurements are but it’s a large lap quilt as far as I’m concerned. The back and binding are micro suede, which was hard to stitch through, and I doubt I’ll use it again (although I did use it as backing on the baby quilt I posted about yesterday). I made several boo-boos on this, like accidentally sewing some pieces in wrong-side-up, not basting it properly, dreadful work on the binding, etc. But I still really like the final look.

The thing that took me the longest to do was choose the fabrics. I went nuts looking for coordinating greens and tans. Two of the greens are made of shirt material from one of my old shirts (the paisley) and a shirt I bought at the Thrift Shop just for making this quilt (with the tiny black diamonds). I think I bought five or six different tan patterned fabrics that I didn’t use before deciding that the large-print tan roses would be my final “light” cotton strip for the logs.

I forgot to label the hand-quilting pics, but the meaning behind the designs is that in the centre is the sun, with concentric circles in tan thread and then two pointy “ray” circles in green and red thread, and at each of the major intersections around the sun are the astrological symbols for cancer — my Mum is a “crabby” July baby 😉 — and the arrow for Saggittarius, representing me, her December-born daughter. Mum’s rather taken with horoscopes and the like, so I thought she’d appreciate the personal touch to the quilting designs. I also stitched the outline of my handprint.

Here are photos of the quilt, some in progress, one completely finished and on the sofa