"Hey, I have an idea for your blog."

So says my sister Sarah shortly after I started this blog last fall.  She then teasingly reminded me that I still hadn't finished the baby quilt promised to her youngest child, Charlie, over a year and a half ago and suggested that I write a blog entry about finishing that. She was just giving me a hard time, but it was in fact a good kick in the pants for me to go back to that long-forgotten project and get stitching.

 Okay, maybe it wasn't quite enough of a kick. That was in October. I finished about half the piecing in January. I finished the rest of it last week...the last week of April. But the point is that I got to it, right?

I have three sisters and among them they have eight children.  With the exception of Charlie, I have made a baby quilt for every single one of them.  I made the first one back in the summer of 1998 and the second one that fall. I made one entirely by hand in Mongolia and one when I was living in Missoula. I have made three more since moving to Illinois. None of my sisters are planning on having more kids, so Charlie's will be the last of the Auntie Hopie quilts.

For Gracie - 2008

For Iona - 1998

For Claire - 2010

For Didi (and with Didi!) - 2002

I should add that I have started Charlie's quilt three times. The original plan was to attempt to match the quilt to the colors in his nursery, but that didn't quite work so I abandoned the effort. The next plan was to do something with a nautical theme, an effort to appease Charlie's dad, but I didn't make it very far with that design. In my third effort, I decided to go with Charlie's interests - at eighteen months, his favorite word was "baseball."  Not surprising, as he lives in a pretty hard core baseball family. I'm a baseball fan myself, and I loved this idea, particularly because I love the way he says "baseball" in his little voice.

Quilting is a far bigger time commitment than knitting, particularly because I cannot multitask nearly as well with a quilting project. There are parts of the quilting process that I absolutely love, namely the planning. I love conceptualizing an idea and shopping for the fabrics. I despise cutting out the pieces but don't mind putting them together. I really don't care for the actual quilting. But I sure love finishing a quilt and presenting it to someone I love.

So stay posted...I'll be back soon with details on the process and pictures of the finished quilt!