Sending The Love...Quilt

EDITED TO ADD: I'm having a fabric give away and some of my favorite scraps from this quilt are included!  Details here.

Duke may not be thrilled, but I am!  I finished the "Love in a Box" quilt that I last blogged about here.

The deadline as mentioned is February 10th and as I write this the quilt is in the dryer.  Made it!

This quilt is being given to my friend Laurie, who started a "Love in a Box" care package swap with a group of her friends.  If we wanted to show we cared about someone we gave her our name and address, and she organized the list for us, telling us who to send a care package to the next month.  It's a way to spread some love amongst friends!  This is our first month, and I got Laurie - - yes the leader is my person the first month!  Something special is in order, don't you think?

Value quilts may just be my new thing.  I first read about them on the blog Sew Katie Did and she has a great tutorial you can read here.  One of the things Katie says is that if you aren't happy with your quilt it probably has to do with the values.  I think that's absolutely true!  So thanks Katie for the great tutorial.

I used some fancy buttons in picnik to play up the values a bit for this picture.  Yep, values do catch the eye don't they?

As the theme is "Love in a Box" I got the idea to add some fun stitching to some of the blocks, randomly, so that they would show through on the back side of the quilt as a sprinkle of boxes.

Using brown and green thread I picked boxes at random.  (Changing out my thread and bobbin - not so fun!)  But I'm hoping it will add a nice dimension to the quilt  - we will soon find out!

This is what it looks like on the back.  I noted the boxes for you with HERE above.

Jolene at Blue Elephant Stitches was the inspiration for black and white in the binding.  You can see an example of her use of black and white bindings here.  I went with scrappy and added in another fabric also.

So next, on to sewing on the binding. I sewed it to the front of the quilt, then wrapped it around to the back and still sewed on the front of the quilt.  I read about that on redpepperquilts and here is her tutorial.

I also left some batting to fill the binding, though I did trim it down some.  What I forgot to do was change out the bobbin color from white.  Oh well, next time I will remember that step.

What I DON'T do is "all that math" to get the binding to join up.  I just leave a long tail, eye ball it, open it to sew, fold it back and keep on sewing.  Look at this closure!  Wow!  I got really lucky this time.  :)

Lunch time!  I took Jack and his 4th grade teacher some chocolate shakes today.  Decided it was "kiss up to the teacher day".  He loved it!  (They both did)

Never having labeled a quilt I went to Amanda Jean's blog where I remembered her having written about that.  Here is her tutorial on her blog crazymomquilts.blogspot.com.  That's a fabric pen and I used a stabilizer on the fabric while writing it, then removed it.

My favorite fabric in this quilt is the red/pink/white fabric and it was added on the last day before sewing! 

See the school bus?  Laurie is a teacher so I'm excited about the buses, scissors, and cupcakes throughout the quilt.  Darn, I forgot some margarita glasses, Laurie!! 

Before it was washed.

Duke tested it out and yep - it's perfect for getting sleepy under...

I am so thrilled to have finished something that I think I might finish something else real soon!!  :) 

EDITED TO ADD: Well the quit came out of the dryer in great shape with the exception of one thing...the label did not have any writing on it!  Oops!  I'm off to the fabric store to buy the right kind of fabric pen that is permanent - not washable!!  :)

Linking up to Finish it Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts!

and

and

Kris

(Behind the scenes...)

A teenager woken from his nap to hold up a quilt for a picture!