Friendship across the country

How lucky am I to have such a great friend! She totally forgives me when her birthday present is SUPER late!
I was just a few days late to start with and then my 'take a risk with quilting' did quite go to plan....

This process picture shows where the error started...because of the small size of the quilt I decided to attach the binding very early on, something I have never done before and will never do again,after I had done the middle bit of pebble quilting.

So pebbling away I went...

and loved it...loved doing it...loved the effect...loved everything about it...except how long it takes! lol

Then for some reason without looking at the back of the quilt properly I started hand stitching the binding down..when I came back to the top of the quilt I found this...

I had stitched the hanging sleeve that I had already attached to the quilt with the quilting...I had two choices...unpick all my lovely quilting or unpick the binding, make a new hanging sleeve, attach it, re stitch the binding and hope like hell that is didn't look funny! That was the first time I put the quilt away in disgust...how could I be so silly...i knew that the sleeve was there...I knew how I was going to pin it out of the way while quilting...I just got carried away!

As you can see I didn't unpick the quilting I just couldn't it was too good and I was afraid that I couldn't do it again like that plus all the little holes it would leave in the quilt! So after it sat for a while I unpicked the binding and made a new hanging sleeve, re-stitched the binding and stitched down the sleeve...it looked ok didn't it??

Then came the next problem...finding my printable fabric for the label! Well I found it eventually in a 'very safe' spot, where I should have looked in the first place and then I made a label. It took me 3 goes to attach it, after Helen told me her trick of using some Visofix on it to keep it straight! The 1st go was too crooked the 2nd was done with large lazy stitches which I pulled out a few days later and the 3rd time, taking my time I got it right!

And so you see that is why Helen's birthday quilt has arrived at her house at the end of July instead of at the end of May like it was supposed to.... and now you can see why she had to forgive me!

The story behind the quilt....??
Helen had her Bye Bye Birdie quilt pattern published in Homespun in October last year. I loved it at first sight (mind you I did have an early preview!!) I had been wanting to make it for ages but just didn't get around to it...other WIP's to finish!

When the 1st of May rolled around in 2010 I knew I wanted to make it for Helen's birthday! How cool I thought to see someone use your pattern from a magazine (well I think it is pretty cool anyway!) I chose a pink, orange and yellow colour way knowing that Helen hangs her little quilts and knowing she already had some in these colours to go with it.

Of course since when do I ever sew a pattern exactly as it is written...I made the quilt smaller, changed the number of columns and the number of birds, changed the directions of the birds...basically the whole thing! This is the part I hope Helen doesn't mind!
Here is Helen with her red hair sitting on the west coast (well west coast-ish now that she has moved)