Janka's quilt

Back in August when Jenny was moving back to Germany, some of her friends in Vancouver organized a going-away present which involved all of us decorating quilt blocks for a baby quilt for her upcoming baby. The plan was then to give her the quilt blocks so she could make her own quilt. You know, because she'd be home with a baby and would have so much time on her hands.

I thought that was a terrible idea, and would just turn into a pile of quilt squares in the corner that would just make her feel guilty. (This is what would happen if someone gave them to me as a present.) So I offered to put it together for her. Not that I'd ever made a quilt before, but how hard could it be, right? It's just sewing in (mostly) straight lines. I didn't want to do anything too fancy, just some sashing between the blocks, and a simple border. How hard could that be?

One of my co-workers came with me to help pick out some nice gender-neutral colours to go along with the pastel colours of the quilt blocks, which were chosen by someone else. We settled on a dark blue border and backing with bright orange sashing and bright yellow as the little squares where the sashing meets. (I'm sure there's a name for this, but I don't remember it from the how-to-quilt book I took out from the library.) The dark blue we also chose because it looked a bit like the ocean, and Jenny's an oceanographer.

The piecing took no time at all, I finished it in a weekend. There was nothing to this quilting, I decided. As such, I got a bit more ambitious, and decided to appliqué a variety of sea creatures on the back to fill out the ocean scene. This was a bit trickier than I'd expected, and my old sewing machine started giving me some troubles. This wouldn't be such a big deal but I was trying to get it finished before we left for Germany in September so that I could bring it along with us. Finally, I decided we could send it in the mail and I should finish my presentation instead. As such it sat around for a while before I got back to it. Anyhow, here's some pictures of the progress. The first shows me back during the sunny and warm Labour Day weekend, pressing all the little pieces like a good little seamstress, before setting up some "sweatshop piecing".
And here's a picture of me working on the blasted appliqué. What you're seeing there is the legs of the octopus I put on the back. When I finally went back to the quilt to finish it the machine was running much more smoothly, the tension was perfect, and the many legs on the crab no longer made me cry.
And finally, here's the completed back side, before we popped it in the mail in mid-November, the week that little Janka was born, with a congratulations card from all the folks at work. I can't wait to go meet her in February!
And here's little Janka with the quilt that had just arrived in Frankfurt, showing off the colourful quilt blocks on the other side.