Oh Happy Day

Today we finally had Brayden's baby shower and I finally gave my daughter the quilts I had made for him.  The first was the Word quilt that I started before we knew it was a boy or girl and had to wait forever for a name for the baby to be finalized before being able to finish it.  Brayden's quilt was worth all the time and effort though as it was all I could hope for it to be and more. I am very pleased with the final result as you can see by my big smile.

The pattern for all the letters in the words are from the pattern Just My Type in lowercase from Kristy at Quiet Play that I had the honor to pattern test for her a few months back.  You can find the pattern available for her letters and her other paper piecing patterns at her Crafty Store site.

 This next quilt I gave to her when Brayden was born.  My daughter and her husband are big on woodland animals and I thought they would like the deer.  The stag reminds me so much of Bambi's father.  These patterns are from Joanna at Shape Moth .

I did have one surprise for my daughter that I just finished last night in time to give to her today. It was a total shock and surprise to her and that was the best part ( at least for me )... for her she just loved getting it at all.  Months ago she saw a similar blanket available on Etsy but the cost was something she didn't want to incur.  Lucky for her, she has a mom that can try to accomodate her requests for something special that catches her eye in the quilt department.  But in this case we had a problem.  The fabric was from a Robert Kauffman line that was from 2011 and 2012 and although adorable it proved impossible to find.  I had found  the girl fabric panel featuring lots of pink at a store in our town but once an ultrasound showed she was expecting a boy I knew that pink would never do.  We started searching for the boy panel but it seemed to be an impossible task to find it.  After spending hours searching for it online, I turned the task over to my daughter to search for it.  She didn't have any better luck so we were pretty sure we just wouldn't be able to find it.  You can only search online for so many hours before giving up hope.  About a month or more went by and I decided one night to try looking again.  Within 15 minutes, I found it at one and only one store.  Half a world away, in Australia, I found it!!!  The store wouldn't send it to me until I confirmed I would agree to the shipping costs but I already knew I wanted that flannel panel regardless of shipping costs!

Look at the surprise on her face when she opened her present today.  I wrapped the quilt with the backing to the outside so she would have no idea what was on the inside until she opened the quilt up.

It didn't take much of a peek for her to catch on what she was looking at.  She had fallen in love with the border the girl at Etsy had paired up with the flannel panel.  It was a camo and orange pieced border.  Although, I thought it was lunacy, I must admit, it paired up nicely with the fabric and turned out adorable.

I had to share this photo even though my DH captured it with a bit of a blur ( at least it was captured ).
You can't see it thru Mia but she is giving me a high five...she was so EXCITED and still had not seen the whole quilt yet.  That's the good stuff right there.

Here is the resulting quilt, it definitely was worth all the time it took me to find the fabric and wait for the package to arrive from a place so far away. I know I've said it before but the internet is an incredibly life changing tool.  To think a generation ago my parents could never have dreamed of being able to do something like this for me and yet I can do it for my daughter with...relative ease :)

While to someone like me a flannel panel isn't exactly what I think of when I think of starting a quilt project for someone, you can tell my daughter was overjoyed at receiving the blanket she had dreamed of having when she found out she was expecting a special little fellow to light up her days.

I have to admit that after outlining each of the animals and all the leaves in the quilting process and adding the pieced border that it did indeed turn out to be a beautiful finished blankie.