It’s finished.  Done, dusted and gifted.  Finally.

This is a wedding gift for my bestest friend and lovely husband.  Go on, ask me when they got married.  Yep, that’s right, 2003.  And when did they get the quilt?  Yep, that’s right, last week, for their 10th anniversary.

Now, whilst in my defence of the lateness of the gift, originally I had a great excuse reason.  My sister got married 3 weeks before this wedding, and she also got a quilt, and, what’s more it was finished on time.  However, it turns out leaving only 3 weeks for another one was cutting it a bit fine.  So I said, hey, I’m making you a quilt, but it’s not ‘quite’ finished.  Hmmm. Well, that was a great reason for not being done by the wedding, but the next ten years??  Life?  Kids?  Holidays?  Work?  Truthfully I suspect it was the lack of a deadline.

And it’s not like I could forget it.  Because they got married on our 6th wedding anniversary.  So every wedding anniversary I was reminded of the elephant quilt in the closet.  It has become a subject of mild hilarity over the years.  Every now and then I would pull it out and add a bit.  I know for a fact it’s been basted and in a box for at least 4 1/2 years.  So I have liberated an extraordinary number of basting pins – yay.  (I distinctly remember once buying more basting pins to avoid having to finish it.)  Here’s a close up of some of the quilting.

The middle of the rectangles are photos of doors.  (Upside down in this photo)  It was so long ago, but I suspect they are printed onto t-shirt transfer fabric and ironed on.  I know they came after the rectangles, as I thought it looked a bit bland.

These are not really my favourite colours, and it turns out if you dont love a quilt you avoid finishing it…  Although I like it much, much more now that the quilting is done.

Here is a photo of it on their bed.  This is courtesy of Facebook – hey, they must like it if they are posting a picture.

Now you would think I would be sighing with relief, and I am, but I am never one to make life simple, and a few weeks ago I thought it would be nice to make them another ‘compensation’ quilt, for having been without for so long.  So I started another one.  The real reason for the new one was a clear out of fabrics, when I came across a box of fabric that my friend had given me.  There were linens and velvet etc that she had intended to make clothes out of and never got around to.  “I know”, I thought.  “I could just quickly cut these into big squares, add a few more, and make a quilt.”  The key problem word here is ‘quickly’ as I should know by now. Anyway, I have been frantically trying to get both quilts done in time.  But it didn’t quite happen.  Here is the state of the new quilt.

And so the saga of the unfinished quilt gift continues…