Hugs & Kisses - My First BIG Solo Quilt

I'm linking this post up with Craftbuds "Craft Book Month". This quilt I made was based on a pattern called "Coming Home" from Camille Roskelley's book, Simplify. Camille's pattern was for a table topper sized quilt and since I wanted to make a queen sized quilt, I adjusted up the size of the pieces a bit.

Mom and I made a big quilt for Josh and Noelene last year. Mom did all the machine sewing on it. I mostly did pattern and fabric selection, cutting, marking, pressing, and hand applique. Many years ago Mom and Dad helped me make a quilt for Cheryl and Richard for their wedding. I did all the hand applique and a lot of the hand quilting but Mom did all the machine sewing and she and Dad did a lot of the hand quilting. Kevin even quilted a whole large rose by himself, too! Mom has always been key to the little bit of quilt making I've done ... until recently. It's time, don't you think?

This is the first large-sized quilt I've made ALL BY MYSELF ... well, except for having it longarm quilted by Lynnette of Ladybug Longarm in Saskatoon.

I'm very pleased with it and it was a good learning experience. I struggled with matching points and learned that my quarter inch seam was not quite exact. For Uncle Reg's quilt, which I made after this one, my quarter inch seam was much more accurate, making things a lot easier.

Can you see all the X's and O's in the quilt? I liked the idea of hugs and kisses for a wedding quilt and that's what this is. The bride's wedding colours were orange and pink so I picked a bunch of random fabrics from my collection in those colours and threw in some purples and a little yellow. With the colours being so "girly", I tried to pick fabric designs that weren't otherwise "girly" and I tried to tone down the overall effect by using Kona Tan as the background fabric. I used scraps to make the pieced border and I bound it with a purple fabric I found after the top was finished. The back is just a sandy colour with an overall large white modern flower graphic.

All I have left to do is add the label and deliver to the bride and groom. The wedding was at the end of June so I'm only a little late. I'm quite sure they don't read my blog so this will be a surprise for them even though I've shown it to the world ... or the eeny bit of the world that might think to check my blog. Ha!

The first photo (the one at the top) shows the colours most true, I think.

Quilts Stats:
Quilt Name: Hugs & Kisses
Size: 74" x 84"
Fabrics: A random mix of quilting cottons, most of which I can't identify by designer, and Kona Tan for the background fabric. I don't recall the names and designers of the back and binding fabrics. Sorry.
Pattern: A variation on the "Coming Home" pattern by Camille Roskelly found in her quilting book, Simplify. Ultimately, I "winged it" when it came to my cutting dimensions. I wanted my squares to be bigger than those in the pattern since my finished project would be much larger as well.
Surface Quilting: Lynnette of Ladybug Quilting. She did an overall swirly design that gives a lovely texture and movement to the look of the quilt. I like what she did very much. I chose a thread colour for the surface quilting that closely matched the background fabric colour. After Lynnette started, she felt that a darker thread would be more effective and I'm glad she went with that. She was right.

I'm so very pleased with this quilt and I hope the newlyweds are pleased with it, too.  Well, of course they will be, if for no other reason than I made it just for them, though I think it's very pretty, too.

Next? Wee Robert's quilt. He turns 1 right away and I still don't have his quilt made. I hope to get it done pronto and then I have two other quilts I would like to get done before Christmas.  That's certainly ambitious for me ... work gets SO in the way of my quilting progress ... but I'll see what I can do.

I'm taking a free motion quilting class starting this Monday at Periwinkle Quilting. I'm excited to learn how to do the surface quilting using my own little Pfaff Tipmatic that I've named "Jo" after Joanne who was its original owner and for which I've been MOST grateful. I don't think I'll ever tackle a large quilt using my own machine but I hope to be able to do my own surface quilting on smaller quilts.

As always, just click on a photo to see a bigger version.

Addendum No. 1:

I finished the label for Alyssa and Tyler's quilt so I'm putting the photo of it here to keep all the photos together. For the label I used 4 half square triangles leftover from the trimmings and then, because "hankie labels" have become my signature, I added a little embroidered corner from a handkerchief. I wish I'd had a hankie with a tiger lily on it but I didn't and I wasn't about to embroider one myself.

Addendum No. 2:

The quilt has been delivered into the hands and hearts of its destined newlyweds.