JOY! A Quilt Finish for an Amazing Woman

I have found one of my favorite things about quilting and sewing is the ability to express my love through a handmade gift. Forcing a little zippered bag or a quilt on a friend makes me very happy. (Definitely not a unique feeling amongst sewists, I’m sure – based on all of the swaps and posts I see on Instagram.)

My former personal trainer is a person I very much adore. I went to her afraid of excercise – distrustful of my body. I signed up for some group training classes and got so much more than just instruction in strength training. She was so kind, so generous, so supportive, so encouraging – so everything that is wonderful that I started to believe that I was worthy enough of taking care of myself through exercise. But M cares so much about people, about her clients, that I was convinced I can do anything. The very fit often focus on making fit people fitter – M focused on giving us the tools, strength, encouragement to love exercise – no matter what our fitness level was.

My health journey still is a, well, journey. Years of bad choices based on a distrust and hatred of my body take a long time to get over. But M started me on the path to recovery. I haven’t been able to make it to sessions with her for a couple years now, but she still is in my heart. And when I accomplish something meaningful to me in my fitness practice, I think of her and how proud she would be of me.

And so a few weeks ago when M commented on my Instagram feed that she liked the bird Hello, World! fabric panel that I posted a picture of…

I jumped at the chance to make her a quilt out of those panels for her baby girl (yet to be born). I love this quilt because it goes a small way in letting M know how much she has meant to me.

And I love it because it is frickin’ adorable. I used one of each of the panels – gifaffe, bird, lion, elephant – and then added strips of fabrics that pulled out the colors in the panels.

I love love love love the light blue shade (“Lake”) in Carolyn Friedlander’s Architextures collection. It is such a pure light blue – matches when no other blues do. I am pretty stingy with it because I love it so much… so I used only a little bit in the binding, along with a pink fabric from the Hello, World line.

I backed with a super soft cotton flannel and did simple straight-line quilting. I wish I was interested in quilting more, but just not there yet. But this quilting is functional.

Oh! and thanks to the encouragement and tips of Hydee Ann, I machine bound and it ended up much better (YAY!!)

One more little thing about this quilt… I love this bicycle fabric… so sweet and a nod to M’s love of fitness. It is Go By Bike in Lime by Erin McMorris that I got as part of the Fabric Shoppes Color Your Stash bundle. Fabric Shoppe also has yardage of this available.