My first actual quilt...a super long term UFO

The weekend before last I took the kids up to Cooperstown to visit my cousin Amy and her parents (you can read more about them on my Mother's Day post). The weather actually cooperated, and it was a lovely 80-ish and sunny. I love going there because I really relax. This is me lounging, while Ally enjoys the pool with Auntie Amy.



Amy's mom, who is my Aunt Pat, is a crazy accomplished quilter. So I dragged my sewing machine and my first quilt top with me, thinking with Aunt Pat's guidance, I would swallow my fear of quilting and binding and just dive in.

This quilt top mind you, has been done for at least a year. The pattern is from an easy quilt magazine, I'm not even sure which one. But it's made with Mark Lipinski's Califon, the first designer line I ever fell in love with.



Of course, I forgot to bring my batting, so we had to make a lightning fast last minute run to a quilt store (as it was closing at 5 pm on Saturday!) to get some batting. I used this great green stuff that is made from recycled plastic bottles, and I actually really love how nice and heavy it makes the quilt feel. The top is about 42" square.

Aunt Pat helped me with the spray adhesive and get everything nice and flat. Then she said "Go ahead and baste it. Starting from the center, out into eighths." So I did. BY MACHINE. You can see what my not-so-smooth quilting looks like. It's not perfect...but I do like the look of the curved quilting stitches.



Of course, when she saw me she said "Oh, I meant by HAND. That's going to take you forever to rip out." I may actually have seen a tiny smirk when she said that last part.

Can you say UGH?? It took me a full hour and half to pull out the basting stitches. But it's done. And because I saw some of his amazingly gorgeous quilts at Market, I asked Scott from Blue Nickel Studios what his preferred binding method was, and he sent me a tutorial.



So my longest running UFO is slowing becoming an "FO". I have the binding started. I'll post pics as soon as the quilt is done. But I'm proud of getting this far.

Stay tuned!