Eleanor's Baby Quilt

I finally finished Eleanor's baby quilt!!!!!

That deserves way more exclamation points than I will include here, but really, this is a HUGE deal for me.

When I was 25 weeks pregnant, I got the insane idea that making a triangle baby quilt would not only be easy but also loads of fun.  I mean, it's just a bunch of triangles after all, right? And there's no crazy complex pattern involved, right?  And I my motivation would never wane because I loved this wonderful unborn child of mine. Right??

Clearly, my brain was foggy from pregnancy hormones or something because any quilt is a massive undertaking, especially an equilateral triangle quilt.  Add on top of it that that my mom is the one who has the true quilting skills and I was heavily relying on her expertise.  We were staying with my parents when I started this quilting endeavor, which was great.  However, we soon moved into our San Jose apartment and I lost my nonstop interaction with my quilting mentor and with it went my loss of motivation.

I slowly worked on the quilt here and there and then eventually turned it over to my mom to finish sewing together the triangles.  I was pretty happy to not have it laying around my house, giving me tons of guilt every time I walked by.  After my mom finished sewing the triangle top though my love for the original quilt idea was renewed and I wanted in on the project from there on.  I worked on the quilt a little over Thanksgiving, Christmas and Eleanor's birthday weekend.  And then I finally finished it on my birthday.

My favorite part of the whole experience was doing the quilting (sewing the top layer, batting and backing) all together.  My lines got straighter and straighter each time and I really felt like I was improving my skill.  It was just so satisfying to see the quilt really come together and take on its new life as a soft blankie.

Now don't look at any of these pictures too closely because this quilt is faaar from perfect, which kills me because I am a perfectionist about these sorts of things.

I eventually had to accept that it was better for Eleanor to have an imperfect quilt then no quilt at all so I kept plugging away despite cringing at every pucker of the fabric.  I could write volumes about what this quilt taught me about letting go of my perfectionism.  They would be profound books that everyone would want to read (I'm sure of it) but I will spare you that for now.

One thing that I found fascinating on this topic though that my mom shared with me is that the Amish are so good at sewing that they force themselves to purposely make mistakes so the quilt will turn out imperfect.  They want their quilts to look homemade and human.  Fascinating!

So Eleanor, you can know that this quilt is most definitely homemade by your mama and that all the imperfections are just evidences that I love you (cheesy but true).

And of course after this year long saga of making the quilt, I couldn't just hand it to her as if it was nothing because it was anything but nothing to me.

So I wrapped it up, tied string around it and had her open it.  She was actually more into than I even expected and played with the quilt for a bit, which made my heart happy.

And now we have read books and snuggled and played on her quilt.  It makes me immensely happy to see it laying around our house and I really do love how it turned out.

I can't end this without mentioning that this quilt would have never be possible if it wasn't for my patient and encouraging mom.  Mom, I promise when the next baby comes around I will pick something MUCH simpler!! ;)