My own bed quilt, finally!

In 1998, a few friends asked me to teach them how to quilt. We did a few smaller projects and then decided to do a block of the month sampler quilt as they are a great learning experience using various techniques. We chose stars as they would also make nice table runners for those that just wanted to join a few of the classes. I did not have a quilt for my own double bed, so decided to use my samples to make a quilt for our double bed.

Fast forward to 2010! and the quilt top is finally finished. But there are reasons why it took so long :-). Here is the finished top. It is at the Marsh Store right now where Tim Bobier is quilting it for me on his long arm machine. I will take a better photo of it on our bed when I get it back:

For the class in 1998, a focus fabric was chosen first and prints were purchased to blend in with that print. I chose this antique sewing themed print for my focus fabric:
We did 10 different star blocks and used quite a few different techniques for constructing the blocks including one paper pieced block. There were two classes and I did a sample for each class to make a total of 20 blocks. Here are the blocks with the black sashings and corner stones of the focus fabric designed to fit a double bed:

I still had four teenagers in the house and was doing the Mom's taxi routine, so the blocks were patiently waiting. My husband went back to school in 2004 and we moved to Hamilton for two years while he obtained his B Ed. degree. During this time, I put the sashing around the blocks, but because we were not living at home, I couldn't measure it on the actual bed. When we returned to our own home, we were contemplating moving at some point and thought we might get a queen sized bed if we had room in the new house. Because of the busyness of life, we did not move for several years. We built a new house, lived in another place for 6 weeks, began the huge task of unpacking and organizing, and finally found a queen sized bed that we liked in the fall. A friend of mine is also working on a quilt for her bed and we decided to get together a few weeks ago and get these quilts finished and on our beds. Thanks, Deb, for the inspiration to get it finished!

I added a border of 2" squares all around the quilt to make it bigger. The black focus fabric was too dark around that black, and I had the lighter version of the same print which worked well in between:

Here is a close up of the border fabrics:

I should be getting the quilt back in a couple of weeks and then I just need to add the binding!! Can't believe this quilt is actually almost finished and that I still love the print after 12 years!!