DONE!!!!

 Every single article on aging, on avoiding dementia talks about the value of problem-solving and learning new skills in keeping one young. Today I took my last stitches on the baby quilt. Every bit of it was a challenge and in the very best way.

My client was worried that using so many different fabrics would create a visual cacophony. The strong horizontals of the shelves and the railroad tracks and the recurring use of red keep the composition coherent.

I had assumed that I would quilt ( that is, attach the layers of the quilt together) by machine. The bulk of the quilt was too much for my sewing machine. I realized that I had to go traditional and quilt this by hand.

I stitched meandering lines in two different blues, lavender red, and green. it took me a little while to get into the rhythm of the work.

Some quilters use the act of quilting to impose a grid over the design. I did not.

I thought about the baby that would be using this quilt and how he would be so close to the surface of the quilt. How I wanted the surface to be inviting to his face. All tired babies mash their faces when they are tired. I thought of this baby rubbing his face into the quilted texture when he was tired and then dropping off to sleep on the quilt.

I made a binding for the edges of the quilt using the fabrics that are part of the design. I stitched the binding onto the back of the quilt and then hand-stitched it to the front.

Here you see that handwork is in progress. The patchwork fabric on my table is half of a duvet cover my mother commissioned the summer before I was born. This duvet cover was used and machine washed weekly for thirty years. It is all hand-stitched

I figure that if the hand-stitched duvet cover could survive decades of machine washing and drying then my hand stitching could as well.

I am so happy with this piece. I hope that the baby this was made for will enjoy it as much as I have.