a quilt for a sunshine girl

Last November (as in 2009), I had a vision of two beautiful + bright quilts, hand quilted, of course, wrapped in thick red ribbon and carefully tucked under our tree just waiting for Christmas morning. I had big dreams + absolutely no experience in quilting. I spent all of November cutting + piecing + pinning + sewing, hours and hours were poured into these quilts before I realized that there was no way I could finish before Christmas. Carefully I folded them and stacked them neatly in my closet, vowing to finish them in January - maybe, just maybe in time for Valentine's Day.

Imagine my surprise when I found them this past November all pinned + ready for hand quilting! I spent most of November watching 50+ hours of Bones + Friday Night Lights (which i found surprisingly compelling, given that it's about high school football...) stitching away, and I managed to finish Sela's quilt 3 days before Christmas. Hooray!

And you know what? She loves it. Almost as much as she loves holding completely still + smiling RIGHT INTO THE CAMERA, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD. She's a wiggly one, that sunshine girl.

the pattern I used was denise schmidt's flock of triangles. brooke has a great post about her daughter's flock of triangles quilt (with much better photos!) right here. i used this great tutorial for the binding, and found it incredibly helpful. i also want to try katie's 10 hour quilt sometime soon, it's so simple + beautiful.