My First Quilt - "Happy New Home"

So not knowing what I *didn't* know  ;)  I jumped right into my first quilt.

I wandered the quilting fabric section at JoAnn's [if you haven't already, sign up for their mailers and get a 40% off coupon twice a month!] and found my inspiration: tiny pink piggies!!!

This happy little leaping piglet near the bottom is my favorite!

My sister-in-law Tiffany loves piggies, so therefore my first quilt would be for her.  [It could just as easily have been any of you other dear readers so don't be jealous.]

Quilters call this type of fabric the 'focus fabric' and base the rest of the quilt around it, so that's what I did too.  I can't remember now when I started, but it was while she was house-hunting, because I intended to give it to her as a gift for her new home, and the quilt was finished in July 2007:

With this label I played with the embroidery stitches on my sewing machine to make a border, and made several tries with the iron on transfers until I realized you have to mirror-image the photo and text.

I used a relatively simple 9-patch pattern for the front:

This also shows the hand stitching in the center of the 9 patch blocks.

Keith helped me with the final pattern selection and the size of the light blue accent border and binding.  He's like an editor for me that way, which is a nice part of our partnership because he lets me edit his writing sometimes, too.

I thought it turned out really nice!  :) 

But I couldn't let the back just be 'plain', and it kept me up nights trying to solve the puzzle of how to get as much of the piggie fabric in one piece as I could until I literally sat up in bed in the middle of the night with the solution:

Tiff and I in her new house with her new quilt! *

Because of the pieced back I chose what I thought would be a 'simple' pattern to quilt in the border:

But it was extra hard to quilt it because I added batting AND and a flannel blanket in between, making it extra thick for Tiff because she likes to be cozy.  Then I marked it with a chalk pencil and the marks got brushed off as I was moving the quilt around to sew.  Also I used my shiny new 'walking foot' which really isn't made for such small motifs.  So it was really frustrating I learned a whole lot while making this quilt. 

*But that's not the best part!  The best part is that I bought this fabric before she bought her house and my quilt totally matches the colors of her living room!  And now Tiff can never redecorate, unless it matches my quilt...ha ha - just kidding [mostly!]

I love my sister-in-law and I love that she loves the quilt I made for her, even though it wouldn't win a blue ribbon at the fair, because I'm not perfect either and she loves me too!