The Everest of Quilts (a personal tale)

I have completely finished the top of my Heron quilt (aka: The Big One).  If you haven't read about this specific headache of mine before now I will catch you up to speed; I promised a quilt to my mother which I had no idea how to start, never mind complete.  My last post was two weeks ago, at which time I made a phone call to my mother which went basically like this:

Me: "So do you care about the quilt being square?"

Mom: "Well..."

Me: "Do you want a proper size quilt or a square one!?!"

Mom: "I think I should say... proper size?"

Me: "Good." (insert crazy voice) "Cuz you know it's visually square." 

I had a wicked jog in the background which was causing me no end of frustration, and it seemed the more I "squared" the quilt, the weirder everything got.  I ended up just taking the bloody thing apart and fixing the jog (it really wasn't as hard as I'm portraying, but I have no friends here yet so I have to make my own drama).  Then I told my husband that unless he helped me make my quilt properly square he wasn't going to benefit from my services... of making dinner.  So anyhow, now I have a perfectly square background to work with.  Once you go square you won't ever go back... to... not square.  O.K, lame joke, but you know what I mean.  I'm not sure how other people would square their project like this but obviously I used painter's tape and a husband to do it.  So it was time to start the applique and, quite honestly, I was ready for something I knew I could do.  With both my husband and my father vying for the credit of coming up with the silhouette idea, I've decided just to take all the credit and say that the idea was brewing in my mind from the first. 

I did the applique using freezer paper cut-outs and turning the edges under (turn applique?).  It's stitched down using clear thread and a blanket type stitch.  The wind kinda blew the quilt a bit during the photo, and I couldn't push my husband any further into helping me, because taking a picture is soooo much work... I'll leave it at that, he's a pretty good sport. So you can imagine my elation of having the hard part over, or at least it seems that way when you finish the top... kind of like having a baby, it's so beauitful and wonderful.  Then it starts to cry, and you realize the work as just begun (I wonder if this quilt is enough for my mom?).  I have no idea how I'm going to quilt this, yet.  But before I get into that I need a border, or three.  My foray into the quilt shop left me reeling with consumer's remorse and abject terror that I was going to ruin my hard work with a terrible border choice.  At the same time, I ALWAYS feel this way so I just bit the bullet and tackled the borders.

96" x 84"

I'm pretty happy with the results of the quilt top.  I have my backing and batting ready to go so I can baste this behemoth whenever my courage returns.  Plus, I think I'm going to need some time to really think over what kind of designs I should quilt this thing in.  I need to keep in mind that the quilt is meant for a bed and so the quilting cannot be too dense, which is a shame because I would love to just quilt the hell out of this thing.    On a side note, I finished this little quilt for a friend's new little boy.  I'm also linking up to The Needle and Thread Network. http://needleandthreadnetwork.blogspot.ca/