I’m not a quilter.  And even though, I decided I wanted to make this quilt.  It’s a pretty ambitious project for a non-quilter, since it’s not just piecing together the same shape to make a pretty pattern.  Fortunately for me, my mom loves to quilt.  I asked her a while ago, if she could only choose one type of craft (and she’s a maven of many) that she could do for the rest of her life, what would she choose.  She chose quilting.  (I’d choose cross-stitching, if you were curious).

Back in 2002, Mom and I went to the Association of Pacific West Quilters show in Seattle.  As a non-quilter, sure it was a little boring, but the quilts were obviously works of art.  That’s where I fell in love with the U is for Unicorn quilt, which just happened to win the Viewers Choice award that year.  As you can see, it’s quite the ambitious piece for a non-quilter.

Mom said she would help me.  And after buying the book, and a couple years of prodding, we finally started putting it together (under the nagging of “I’m not getting any younger!”).

My biggest fear has been, “Am I picking the right colors?”  Mom gave me a fair amount of her fabric stash for the quilt, so I’ve been picking from that, and some fat quarter collections I’ve picked up at a couple fairs (the golds and greens I wanted had to be fairly precise).  I even scoured the internet for the perfect background fabric–something similar to the quilt I saw back in 2002.

Mom’s also got a fancy Bernina sewing machine.  So it was pretty much understood I’d be doing the bulk of the grunt work (picking the colors, cutting out the tiny appliqué pieces from the fabric, ironing them on to the background), while she did the satin stitching, and most likely the finishing quilting stitching.  I think we’ve done a pretty fine job so far!

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