The Summer Quilt (at last)

Eleven months ago, I started work on my Summer Quilt.  It has been quite an epic journey- sourcing fabric scraps from a wide variety of places, cutting over 700 four and a half inch squares, sewing it all together, and finally, over the past couple of weeks, sewing down the binding.

I have thought about this quilt so much over the past eleven months.  When I was really busy and had no time to work on the Summer Quilt, I would take a peek at the Ollalieberry Ice Cream quilt group on Flikr for some inspiration.  I knew it would take me a long time, and it doesn't matter that summer is over (as it is, it barely feels like we have had a summer this year) because the Autumn Quilt will likely take me another year to complete, so I am perfectly happy having the Summer Quilt on our bed for Autumn.

This is the pinkest girliest quilt I have sewn, and given I am not really a pink girly type person I am surprised at how much I love it.  Even the back is pink and girly- the striped fabric is some shirting fabric I got at The Spot a few months ago.  I didn't get quite enough, but I had plenty of squares left to make it large enough.

I also love the scrappy nature of the quilt- I didn't follow the instructions in relation to fabric which indicated how many squares of each fabric- I just collected all sorts of fabric- scraps from the first dress I made A2, a bundle of Kona pink solids I bought, a Regent Street charm pack I had, some Liberty scraps from my friend Mel's quilt, a big pile of scraps I got from Fran, scraps from TreeFall Design where I got A2's Princess and the Pea set, random fat quarters I bought from all over the place that I thought might look nice, and of course the leftover fabric from Sister 3's Birthday Quilt for the binding.  I love the stories behind the fabric in the quilt, how it came together, the time it took to make, and the fact that this quilt can never be repeated.