Godspeed, Little Quilt

And just like that, he's gone.  My first commissioned quilt, on its way to the arms of 2 little boys and their mom.  *sigh*  I won't lie, it feels a little like having turned in a final exam that I'm pretty sure I did well on, but I'm still not 100% sure I got an A.  I hope they like it.  I had a lot of fun making it.

We had a little outdoor photoshoot yesterday:

This one is upside-down because that was how I could get the picture. 

The artsy ruffled shot

The back

My label!  How nifty is that??  It's technically an iron-on kind, and it faded a bit in the wash...I'm not too heartbroken since I got a good deal on them, but this might not be a permanent solution. 

All folded up and ready to go!

Oh, so my laundry woes...I washed the quilt and (gasp!) some of the blues looked distinctly more purple than when I started!  Eek!  I washed it again (and again and again...) with some color catching fabric and this is the result.  I sent a note to the buyer to make sure she washes it separately for the first couple washes.  The blues are back to blue, but my heart stopped a bit at first.  Phew!

All's well that ends well though, and this guy (shown here with a glimpse of the rod sleeve) went in the mail this morning.

Now that that one's out the door, I'm on to a new project.  Here are the squares of batting and backing, and a few choice scraps for border strips that I'm using for my Rag Train quilt:

Here's the final layout, with the upper left corner block done.

Quick picture of the workstation.  A note here...all the fabrics I'm using for this one are from my stash/scraps.  I'm not letting myself buy ANY more material for this - I have more than enough as it is, so I just need to get creative.  :-) If I've made you a quilt in the last year, you'll probably see familiar fabrics in this one.  

And the first two blocks done and sewn together,just to see how it'd work.  I found all manner of scraps from the plaid quilt to use, which I'm totally stoked about.  I adore plaid, especially as it's getting colder, and I think it lends a touch of funky personality to the quilt.  It makes me think of a lumberjack/hipster with a 3 year old who loves trains.  Anyone know anyone like that?  :-D 

So that's that.  Hopefully this one will be up on etsy sometime next week, assuming I get all my chores done so I have time to work on this.  It's going together quickly, but I gotta remember I have other stuff to do too...like wedding thank you notes.  :-)