Finished in the nick-of-time!

This is from a book called Not Your Grandmother's Log Cabin-by Sara Nephew. The pattern is called Native American Blanket and it was made for our son and daughter-in-law for Christmas. They'd moved from Alaska to New Mexico this past year and replaced their queen bed with king- so, naturally they needed a bigger quilt!

The technique is fairly easy and uses a proprietary triangle ruler to precut 1 1/2" inch strips. The result is pretty accurate triangle-shaped log cabin style blocks that make many different patterns based on the layout and color scheme. Easy- or mostly easy...but we did have a little set back. In an effort to make it a mother/daughter gift, my lovely and talented youngest daughter, Kylie, got things turned around and ended up piecing the "winged-triangles" with the wings on the wrong side. And it wasn't until she finished sewing and pressing all 70 blocks and I attempted to put them together that I made this discovery. Yikes!

So, late one night, after ripping (or "reverse-sewing" them as we'd rather call it) removing the threads and pressing all 70 blocks with the help of my dear friend, Amelia, I began the reconstruction. We were watching a movie, the title escapes me just now, but I got on a roll and began chain-piecing them and made quick work of it. AND it wasn't until I got to number 67 that I finally realized I was sewing them back together THE SAME WRONG WAY! Yes- really! And in that instant, rather than melting down, I actually started laughing. It may have been to prevent a meltdown, but it worked. I hadn't even had much wine that night...we were drinking mostly tea. So I again ripped, pressed and re-sewed all the winged-triangle blocks. And my friend Amelia hung in there with me (she deserves a medal) but by the time we got to bed, the winged-triangles were done!

The next day it was my goal to sew all the diamond-shaped blocks together in rows with the winged-triangles and I did get it laid out and it looked pretty good. I was feeling pretty proud of myself and actually had hopes of getting the borders on by supper time. Oh, I forgot to mention this was December 17th and I was supposed to drop it off the next day to the Lovely Shana in North Pole. When daughter number one, Brooke, got to the house later that afternoon, she exclaimed how much she liked it....but that it wasn't anywhere big enough for a king bed. Seriously? Couldn't I just put wider borders on?

"No!" came Brooke's reply. She looked at my pile of fabric and figured I had enough for two more rows of blocks. 26 more blocks in all. Holy-moly! But she was right, it wasn't big enough. So back to the cutting table I went and she volunteered to press and we kicked it up a notch and finished it by 11pm. It did make it to Shana's by the 18th- which was the day Preston and Sarah arrived from NM- and because Shana is SO amazing, I got it back by Friday! Then the binding- whew! Kylie had offered to hand sew all 450" of the French double-fold binding by hand and that girl pulled it off. So maybe my dad was right in nicknaming me "Last-minute-Lonnie" and maybe some of it rubbed off on my talented girls. And maybe it's not such a bad thing! :)

Preston and Sarah seemed genuinely pleased with their new quilt- a Christmas gift from mom and sisters. And when they sleep under that Native American Blanket- woven with TLC, they know they're loved!