I declare this Blog Break officially OVER... with a quilt!

Dear Shayne,

Whew! Guess we took a blog break, there! It's been 2 months since our last post -- by far the longest we have gone without posting here. I know you've been a busy little beaver with your geeky craft happenin's (both the book and the site) and with getting this darling little mascot a name.

But now that she's officially Pixel, let's get back to reportin' our crafty goodness around here. I'm kicking it off with a quilt that I have been working on forever and finally finished this past April.

This is a quilt I made from Bill's dad's shirts. John passed away in February 2007 and I started this quilt in June 2008. At that time, I planned to hand quilt it, so I showed you my hand quilting practice, and then the basting process. That was in August 2008. And then... STALL.

I just couldn't bring myself to finish it. This was the most difficult project I have ever worked on. It took me over a year to even begin cutting the fabrics. Nothing says "This person is never coming back" like cutting up their clothes. That was really, really tough.

So flash forward to 2011, three years later. This thing is hanging over my head, and it's clear to me that I need help. So I gave up on the hand quilting and had it machine quilted at my favorite quilt shop, New Pieces. They had it finished in three weeks. Versus three years. So, you know, that was good.

I had them do a heart pattern in the quilting -- predictable, but appropriate:


After it was quilted, I cut the binding from John's old robe (another tough process) and laid it out on the bed with help from my little overseer:


Here is the entire finished quilt:


Here is a detail of one of the shirt parts that I kept in the quilt -- they did a great job of quilting around these -- you can unbutton this and feel the batting inside!


And this pocket could still be used for a pen:


I did a little home-y embroidery on the back:


And this project is DONE, Shayne. DONE! And I am far more pleased with it than I thought I would be. It turned out great. I'm really proud of it and I'm so happy it's finally in my mother-in-law's hands. Only 4 years late but, well... better late than never, right?

love,
kelly