Here's a quilt that I should have been able to make in a day...or even a week. Instead it took me more like 6 months. I made this quilt for my husband's brother and his wife who just had their first baby girl. 

I asked Kylie (my sister-in-law) what kind of quilt she wanted me to make, and she told me she wanted a stripey quilt, with quilting that was similar to what I did on the Beach Umbrellas quilt. I asked her to send me some paint chips in the colors she wanted, and she did...cute pinks and greens. So for the next few weeks I shopped online, trying to find the perfect fabrics for the easiest quilt in the world to make. Previously when I have made stripey quilts, I have started with one main floral...usually it is a busier print, that has all the colors in the quilt (see examples here and here)...then I get coordinating tone on tone or 2 color prints in various patterns. Easy right? Wrong. For this quilt I found a few darling floral prints that I thought could have worked, but they always had some extra color like red or brown that Kylie didn't want to use. So due to a major fabric finding FAIL...I refused to start making the quilt for like 2 more months while I searched (in vain) for the perfect fabric. Finally the baby's due date was creeping up on me. I had a couple great fabrics --mostly from Sugar and Spice by the Quilted Fish for Riley Blake, and a couple Michael Miller prints. I wished I had more fabrics, but I knew I needed to just get it done, so I decided to grab a couple of solids to fill the gaps and just slap the dang thing together. And at that point I was sure that I was going to hate the finished quilt...self-fulfilling prophecy? Probably. 

The piecing took me like 5 days...Five. For a stripey quilt. I did it while we were in Florida...and I pretty much had to force myself to work on it. I don't know what my problem is...but when I am not in love with a quilt it is hard to motivate myself to work on it. The quilting, however, was a different story...I was actually excited to quilt it. In my opinion, if you've seen one of my stripey quilts, you've seen them all...so I wanted to make the quilting on this one really different than what I have done in the past (flower pantographs) to make it more fun. 

You probably have to blow this picture up to really see it well, but I decided to quilt different designs into each row. To give it a similar feel to the quilting on the Beach Umbrellas Quilt, I did curves and swirls and loops. And it was REALLY fun to do. I used rulers a lot with a little freehand thrown in here and there, tons of marking, and it only took me 2 or 3 days to do the quilting...hmmm...interesting. Here are some closeups:

Now that it is all done, it's not too bad. I think the quilting saved it. :) And hopefully Kylie will love it!