I bought a yellow polished cotton and planned to use the same green that I used in Ashley's quilt. But I found the perfect Kona solid for the alternate blocks and went with that instead.
I have been sewing almost my entire life, but I still forget the basics sometimes. When you have a sample block you really need to look at it once in a while! I made all the side segments for all the blocks and they were perfect.
And then I made all the center segments and they were perfect -- I thought. You can see though, that I did not look at my sample block!! When making complicated blocks simply turning a segment the wrong way makes them all turn out backwards. Needless to say I did a LOT of "reverse sewing" that day.
Ahhhh, that's better!
After all that ripping and re-sewing I finally got the blocks finished and put together.
The border presented its own challenges. I wanted to use all the embroidery from the original quilt top, but it was originally in the corners, and I didn't want to cut through that.
The best thing to do would be simple "Y" seams, right?
Uh Oh! Not so fast. I had to put an underlining behind the old embroidered sections, stitch the corners, figure out the exact sizes of the middle sections, and get the whole thing put together with the final border.
There were a few places where someone forgot to stitch with embroidery thread. At first I thought I would stitch them myself, but then decided to leave it as is. That's part of what makes it special, after all.
Finally, the quilt was finished. Oh, Happy Day!!
I even used the last of the stitched blocks on the back!
The best part of this entire endeavor was giving the quilt to my nephew, Jason, on Christmas Eve. A very special quilt for a very special young man.
