It only took a little over five years, but I finished it! :)

You see, I pieced this quilt top for my 5yo daughter before she was born. We like to leave the baby's gender a surprise, so I was going for something bright and fun and gender-neutral.

After the top was finished, I was afraid it was too girly and made another one. That one isn't very neutral either. I was thinking "rubber ducks" when I made it, but all the blue made it a little more masculine and, of course, we had a girl. I should have just stuck with this one.

I made a lot of sawtooth star blocks back then, too.

Lots and lots of star blocks.

The finished quilt is pretty big, so the back was pieced to make the leftover jungle fabric work (it isn't like I could buy more now!) I usually don't like to piece backs, but that is growing on me, too.

The I am pretty new to machine quilting, but I really love the texture on this one! I didn't know what to do with those large jungle print blocks, so I decided to quilt the entire thing using long, random, "organic" wavy lines.

I watched a video tutorial HERE that was very helpful. When it was all washed it created such a lovely, crinkly texture. I tried to capture it with a picture, but this doesn't do it justice.

So, I guess this quilt is a mixture of my old style and new style. I suppose that is what you get when you wait so long to finish something. I am really happy with the way it turned out, even if I did struggle with my sewing machine and all of the tension issues. I am just hoping that it comes back working better than ever because I would love to try something like this again.

I don't know what I am doing with this quilt now. I might sell it or give it away. I guess it depends. I still can't decide if it is gender-neutral or not. Anyway, I am just glad to have it finished. :)

WOOHOO! I finished it, and it didn't even take me HALF of the month of May! Sweet!!!

And then, because I am ~~lazy~~ uncomfortably pregnant, I walked a few feet outside to our garden, which is planted for grazing this year to give it a rest, flopped it on top of the spelt, and snapped a few pictures as the sun was going down.

Instead of hand quilting this one, I decided to try out the new sewing machine and machine quilted this one in a simple grid pattern. I was hesitant, because it really was difficult to climb around on my hands and knees on the kitchen floor to baste this one. It was even harder to keep Grace from running back and forth on top of the quilt while I did that and I used a thicker batting because it was what I had on hand. So, I wasn't confident that my basting was smooth enough, but that walking foot is amazing! No puckers on the back. YAY!

I bought the backing fabric a loooooong time ago and designed the rest of the quilt around this fabric. It has cute little farmer boys on Farmall tractors and says "What Happens on My Tractor Stays on My Tractor." The stripes didn't line up perfectly on the back, but it isn't horrible considering a toddler was running around on it as I basted.

OK, so the details of why I designed the quilt this way:

~The "fussy cut" squares were from a cute panel I bought a long time ago and I wanted to use some up.(Overly ambitious Plan A was to hand embroider little farm animals on the center squares.)

~The blue bandana print fabrc against the off-white background is because the parents' wedding colors were blue and white (inspired by their silos).

~At the time I was starting to plan this, they were constructing a blue pole building for their new business, but it did not have doors on it yet when I last drove by. When I found out that the churn dash block is also called "Hole in the Barn Door" I thought it fit perfectly! Plus, this block style looked very "traditional" and "old-fashioned" to me.

So, you can see, there was a logical thought process going on here. :)