(heart heart heart} My First Quilt {heart heart heart}

*** Hi everyone visiting from the Blogger Quilt Festival! I am a Totally new quilter. This was my first quilt, other than a doll quilt. Since this quilt, I have done one other, which you can see here. I got the idea for this quilt from Crazy Mom Quilts (yeah, I know, hers is way better), which I heard about from my friend Leslie. Who I blame for my new addiction. Still thinking of a way to get revenge. But I digress... this quilt, as you can also read below, is made from all my daughters old receiving blankets. The second quilt I made is totally different, but made from the rest of the receiving blankets and some other flannel I had. I am planning my next quilt to be for my son, twin size. I like the sock monkey fabrics, but if anyone has a suggestion for a cute little boy fabric (AKA, no flowers), please let me know. Or any suggestions in general. Like I said, I'm NEW as can be to quilting, so please don't think I already know what you might have to offer. I promise, I won't! Thanks for visiting, I look forward to checking out everyone else's quilts!***

Why didn't someone warn me that quilting is not only addictive, but also time consuming, difficult and (physically) hard work?! And stressful, infuriating, potentially expensive (especially if you (I) only have a basic sewing machine, no darning foot, no quilting gloves (yeah, I didn't know there was such a thing. Thank goodness for youtube), no 'stash' of cute fabrics, and no stockpile of the spools and spools of thread that one small quilt requires (I had NO idea!!).

After stippling this quilt, my hands (as Craig likes to call them, my moneymakers - FYI for those who don't know me, I'm a massage therapist) were killing me. Probably because (a) I had no quilting gloves, (b) batted my quilt with another quilt, thus making it absurdly thick, (c) pieced the back and front, thus doubling the number of seams thru which I had to quilt and (d) had to stipple really tightly because (a) I didn't know what I was doing and (b) I kept hitting seams and having to turn. Confused yet? Not to mention that I had to rip out about 1-2 square feet of very tight stippling over the course of the project, which was enough to make me want to burn the entire thing. Thankfully, I was able to resist and have what I think is a super cute quilt to show for it!

Other than the fact that it was my first non-doll quilt and will therefore always hold a special place in my heart, I love it because I made it out of Zoe's and Joshua's old receiving blankets and, as I mentioned, batted it with quilts they received as gifts and used a lot, but were no longer going to use (because they were stained or too small). Yes, I admit it, I'm so proud of me :)

I already have a plan for my next quilt, since I still have flannel left from the receiving blanket. Craig says all he can think of is q-bert. Yeah, that kind of put a damper on my excitement.

Joshua had been asking to play with it the whole time I was working on it, but I wouldn't let him touch it until it was done. this is the back