The idea for this mini quilt came to me in a dream, which has never happened before.  In the dream, I was at a craft show, and I spotted a mosaic.  The mosaic was more metallic in color, but I woke up and knew I wanted to make this.  I had been wanting to make something for my Mother-in-law, who has done so much to help us since Elise was born.  She’s been a complete God-send, in every way.  From rubbing my back and encouraging me while I was in (my 32hr) labor, to staying two nights shortly after she was born while Matt was away and “taking the first feeding” only to take both and let me sleep through the night two blessed nights in a row.  She is always doing for others.

A number of fabrics in both the yellow/orange and blue colorways were ironed to a lightweight fusible web, and then cut out (and cut again and again to fit) until all the pieces were cut to the size I wanted.  I was finally ready to iron them down.   Then I had to sew down each individual piece, because I just didn’t think it would look as nice if I did a quilting pattern on top.  All the threads were brought to the back and tied off.  All of this took approximately six months, because I was only able to work on it when Elise was asleep.  And for a few months she had decided to stop sleeping through the night, so I was a zombie and not putting much time into this.

When it came time to put on the binding, I didn’t want the blue to distract from the sun, and I didn’t want the orange to distract from the blue, so I decided to do a pieced binding.  I didn’t do the best job lining it all up, but it’s close enough, and still has the effect that I want, which is to NOT take away from the quilt itself.  I used a blended yellow/orange thread for the sun, and a blended blue/yellow thread for the sky.  The back was a mess of knots so I put a small piece of a festive Kaffe Fasset print on it, knowing that my MIL likes his work.  Overall, I’m ecstatic with how it came out.  I showed it to a few friends, and they encouraged me to enter it into the mini quilt competition over at Ellison Lane, and so here it goes!