Mary Engelbreit Quilt

Okay, I've been working on this thing for a YEAR!!! My Sister got the embroidery kit for me for my birthday so I could work on it while my husband was deployed. (Thanks Siri!)

I finished the blocks in December and wanted to give it to my daughter for Christmas, but turning it into a duvet cover proved to be trickier than I thought. So I left it alone for about 2 months so I could put my frustrations on the shelf and after a week or 2 of working on it again I finished it :)

I'm excited because this is the biggest quilt I've ever done all on my own.

If you like the quilt and want to make one, HERE is a link it the kit on amazon

Some things I learned/want to remember about this project:

• The blocks took a long time to do because there were several shades of each color.
• I don't know the name of the way I put the blocks together with the purple squares and yellow rectangles, but I think this is my favorite way to put a quilt together.
• I did a piano key boarder, it was my first time and I LOVE the bold look of it, but it was difficult to calculate how much fabric it would take. Also trying to match up the corners was too tricky and I ended up covering the seam with some black bias tape for trim. I'm happy with that compromise.
• I used a very nice old flannel top sheet for the backing and outside boarder. (We rarely use our top sheets so it still looked like new and the fitted sheet that went with it had some holes worn in it and so we had thrown it out. So I figured what the heck, why not use it?) I think this can be a great idea for making large quilts. You can find brand new nice sheets online that have a high thread count. (I saw some 500 thread count twin sheets on clearance at Macy's for only $11 last week! you couldn't get that much yardage in a fabric store for that price.)
• After using a straight stitch to piece it together, I used a zig zag stitch/blanket stitch on the edges of my seems so that they wouldn't unravel and survive washings in the laundry. I did this because it is a duvet cover and not a quilt.
• I tried and tried to make all the seems be on the inside of the duvet cover, so when I turned it around it was a perfectly clean pocket with an edge folded over the opening, but that was the part that proved to be too tricky for me. So eventually I got tired of using my seam ripper and I just folded down the edge and sewed it on the top. You can see that seam, but it is on the bottom where it will be tucked under the mattress anyway.
• Another problem I had was that I wanted the cute lacy edge of the sheet and the buttons to be on the top edge, but When I stepped back I realized I put it at the bottom. I was disappointed, but I think it still looks fine and I wasn't interested in undoing all the seams needed to fix it.
• I'm also just now realizing that I wanted 2 of my blocks to be in another place. Oh well, I guess those can be my Amish humility blocks.

Here she is in front of it.

Yes there is a story to the costume. She had been doing dance classes for the past 6 months and started to not like them. We decided to do something new but then her teacher showed her the costume they would wear for their spring recital and she hated the idea of not being able to wear it. So my husband and I told her that if she stopped dance like she had wanted to, we would still get her whatever fancy costume she wanted. We shopped online and told her the sky's the limit. (We figured anything would be cheaper than another session of dance fees.) instead of choosing a sparkly pink ballet costume like we thought she would go for, she picked this Native American costume. She is super excited about it and I think we could even convince her to wear it for Halloween if we played our cards right.