A Finish and Unconditional Love

I am thankful for my "dad" and my great grandmother.  From them I learned unconditional love.  My definition of unconditional love is the ability to love people no matter what.  There are many people who seem to think you can only love someone who you are romantically involved with or who is a blood relation.  My great grandmother was not a blood relation in any way to my family but she took care of my mother from the time she was a baby, and then me.  My Grandma Parks taught me how to sew, and told me stories of growing up before there was electricity, and cars.

My "dad" met my mother when she was a young teen.  He said the moment he saw her he knew that was the woman he was going to marry.  My mother grew up and married someone else who is my father, but that marriage did not last.  The one who would come by in the morning after working all night to get me ready for school, who taught me how to ride a bike, and  encouraged my love for classic cars is who I call "Dad", and my daughters and grand kids call grandpa.

I am fortunate that I am married to a man who truly understands that type of love.  He loves me, my children and grandchildren just as I love his children and grandchildren. Upset or mess with my daughters--anyone of the 5 or any of the 10 grandchildren and I will be a force to be reckoned with.

I was so excited when I finished this last night.  It was my magic carpet ride from the Twisting to the 60's with Batiks blog hop.  This innocent and simple looking quilt kicked my patootie. 

Here are some fun statistics about this quilt:
The Jelly roll was Snow days  Batiks from Moda this Jelly roll like most had 42 strips and average about 40 inches of useable fabric after trimming selvedges.
I added an additional 4 half yard cuts 3 are Robert Kaufman Fusions Mist line.  The gray/silver on white I am unsure.
The additional half yard cuts created 7 strips each for a total of another 28 strips
Sewing these all together end to end creates a strip which is 2800 inches long or a strip which is over 233 feet long
To iron the 233 feet took over ran hour the first time.
To sew the strips together  after folding the 233 feet in half took on hour....even with my little 301 Singer  Dinah sewing as fast as her little motor would go. 

The backing is called cuddle fleece which feels a lot like Minkee, in fact it is much softer.  I fought with this quilt getting it together, quilting it, even binding it has been a challenge.

Lessons learned:
  If I use a similar backing I will use a light weight fusible interfacing to stabilize it. 
 I will definitely make sure I have plenty of extra yardage instead of trying to scootch by with just a few extra inches which I can usually manage with my other quilts
I will spray baste, and pin much more.
The binding I made was 2 1/2 inches I would probably go a bit wider to account for the bulk.
I would grade the binding, quilt backing and quilt after attaching the binding.
Machine bind.  Trying to bind and sew to the back is impossible with the nap so I actually ended up sewing the binding to the back and hand stitching to the front. 

Temecula Quilting Company has a blog and I saw these tiny cakes stand that were posted.  I save the patterns and just knew I had to play with them a bit.

I made it from scraps which are very small.  The basket ends up being just 2 1/2 inches. 
They also have a Christmas (for lack of a better way to put it) mystery quilt going.
Make 24 of these tiny stars.

1 down!
The next thing is to make 140 4 patch units from 1 1/2 inch strips! 

I am off to watch the minions so their mamma can attend parent teacher conferences at school!  Maybe I will get some more stitching done once I get home.