004

I'm revisiting the quilts of my past, and I'm still in the fall of 2005.  This baby quilt was completed just two weeks after quilt no. 003. 

My husband and I were invited to a couples baby shower for one of his coworkers at the time.  Quiltmaking was still so new and exciting to me that I couldn't bear to pick a gift from their registry - I had to explore a new idea, a new pattern.  Lord knows I needed a break from the log cabin pattern!

I could critique my fabric choices now, but I see the progression in learning as I look back and that is a precious thing.  I was growing and evolving with every new project.  In present-day quiltmaking, that's still my goal.

I cross-hatched the background, but what I was trying to feature in this photo was the "E" I quilted in the middle of the star block.  The baby's name was Elizabeth and I wanted to personalize the quilting.  It's not highly visible, but again, I tried a new thing and I learned from that experience.

I used stencils to pull off the butterfly border and I also see that I hand-tacked the binding down on the back side of the quilt.

Life is life.  People come into our tiny corner of the world and then leave it, sometimes it is us leaving them.  Honestly, we were not very close friends with the family this quilt went to and in a few short years, we lost touch with them completely.  Job changes, moves, life just happens and we move on.  It's a touch sad, mostly it's just a reality.  This situation is not unique, in fact, there will be a lot of quilts on my list that will bring back memories - only memories - of a passing friendship.  But not a single regret.