Gabby's Fish Quilt-FINISHED AT LAST!

I am beyond thrilled to finally be finished with this quilt. Gabby was born last October and is now 9 1/2 months old. It's way past time for her to have her baby quilt!

I had the pattern printed out and had purchased all the fabrics. I had finished another project I was working on and was ready to start Gabby's quilt. It was six weeks until she was due. That was plenty of time to get it finished before she was born. But the night before I was going to start working on Gabby's quilt I broke my arm. I had surgery and spent eight weeks in a cast, recuperating. When I finally got the cast off and had the strength back in my hand and arm, I was anxious to start working on it!

The blocks were fun to make! I loved the subtle fish. But, these blocks were on point....AND I decided to make the quilt just a tiny bit bigger and add one more fish all the way around the outside. This got me into trouble because now I had no idea how to finish the quilt. I needed to add rectangles or triangles or something to make this odd shaped top into a rectangle. Since I had only made one other quilt on-point I was stumped. It sat on my design wall for ages. I thought I could figure it out on my own. I tried two different solutions-and neither worked. Lots of ripping going on. I finally had a quilting friend over for a visit and we put our heads together, discussed it at length and figured out how I needed to finish it. 

It was the hardest quilt top I EVER finished!! It felt so good that I met this challenge and be able to get it done. I was even inspired to make the back of the quilt special too. When the front was finished I had extra fish left over and decided to add them to the back. This was a first for me.

I am so tickled with how it turned out, though it did make it thicker to quilt through, with all those seams.  My next hurdle was the rickrack. I thought it would be cute in the binding, but had never added rickrack to a quilt top before, so this was just one more "first" for this quilt!  

After the fish quilt was finished I had some scraps left and decided to make a smaller quilt with them. I even had three more fish I could throw in. Simple four patch blocks went together quickly. I made this quilt, start to finish, in just four days. It's 36X40"-just the right size for Gabby to nap with.  My son and daughter-in-law were surprised when I had not one, but two, quilts for Gabby. I figured they had waited so long a little bonus quilt was in order. 

I'm so glad Gabby finally has her quilts and can start making memories with them!