A LONG Time Coming For My LONG time (NOT Old) Friend

I have a friend. We have been friends for a very long time. I have wanted to make a quilt for her for a few years now, especially after the benefit that she helped put on for us a year-and-a-half ago now, and her part in getting the ball rolling with all of that. She has been there for moral support, not just in this cancer season but since high school and all of life's ups and downs. Between us it has been a lot! But one thing about my friend Michelle...we always laugh, even through the tears. There is always something to laugh about when we are together!

For today, I will show the final product on the day that I was so excited to surprise her and see how she liked it. To be honest, it is my favorite quilt to date, I was a little sad when it was done. I learned a lot and have become a better quilter because of it. I wish learning would have been this much fun as a kid!

I will share more about the whole process in upcoming posts. I originally thought I would include it all in one post, but as you see it is a sampler quilt and each and every block has a story.

The story actually started when I was making a totally different quilt a couple of years ago that I planned to give her for her birthday. They say measure twice, cut once and well...I guess I got it backwards or something because I had just enough fabric to add some sashing to the sides and then it would be done. But, that would be too easy and somewhere along the way I measured once, or maybe just eye balled it? I don't know what happened that day but I cut them wrong and then the whole project wasn't fun anymore. I will go back and do something with it, it just wasn't meant to be Michelle's birthday present!

The idea for this quilt started in February when Michelle asked if I would be interested in a book that her mother-in-law had. It had many different kinds of sampler blocks and being a person who usually likes a pattern to go step by step, I saw a little glimpse of what could come if I studied some of these blocks. A couple of months later, it hit me how cool it would be to make Michelle a sampler quilt made completely with blocks that I found in her mother-in-law's book. So, there was my inspiration. I will show some close ups in upcoming posts. Yeah, now that I am sharing about it, I AM sad that it is done!