My quilt is finished! I love her. I think she came out so nice. I had her professionally quilted by my friend Sherri at Bumblebee Quilting. She did the quilting and the machine stitching of the binding, and I stitched the back side of the binding down by hand. It was really nice to finish that part myself after making this thing. It's definitely one of the fanciest things I've ever made in my whole life, and it's by far the most (only?) traditional quilt I've ever made. It's nice and big — a very generous square throw. I can't remember the dimensions. I don't like throws that are small. I've been carrying it around with me — sitting under it on the sofa at night, carrying it up to the bed to go to sleep, snuggling under it with the crew in the morning, dragging it back downstairs during the day. I love it so much. It got super puckery and poofy after washing. I used cotton batting this time because I happened to have some; for the past few years I've been using wool batting and . . . I probably still prefer it. It's lighter. But I was surprised at how fluffy this got after its wash. I'm one of those people that never pre-washes any fabrics for quilting. I make the quilt then wash it on hot and dry it hot. One of my favorite things in the world is taking the quilt out of the dryer the first time it's washed (and subsequent times are pretty awesome, too). Ah, that's the best! Fluffy wonderfulness! I love my quilt. I'm so happy.
Grandma Paulson is here visiting so I've been generally goofing off, doing all sorts of things I don't normally do, fabric shopping by myself, going to Knittn' Kitten where the ladies let me look through several huge boxes of '60s and '70s patterns (seriously awesome), going to a MOVIE with Andy where I completely freaked out over the fact that they were serving ice cream — like, the kind that you scoop — at the movie theater: "Oh my goodness! Is this new? Did you just get this? I haven't been to a movie in a long time! Oh wow! How exciting!" And the dude's like, "Uh, no, we've had it for . . . a long time." Me: "Oh!!! Really? Oh my! I need to get out more!" Bounce bounce bounce, down the aisle to the auditorium. We saw The Age of Adaline and we loved it! I'm not going to tell you anything about it because it's better if you don't know. But we both loved it. We're sappy like that.
Rainbow! And sun-lit rain! I love spring.
