Good Night / Bonne Nuit - A finished quilt

It's another finish, and one I am so excited about!

You can scroll down for the finished pictures, or read all about the making of.

Spring/Summer 2013 - having been quilter for many years, it dawned on my that our bed was the only bed in the house that did not have a quilt on it.  Sounds familiar?  So I set out to make a simple quilt made of 3"x 9" strips, using some favourite fat quarters I had been accumulating.

The top went together quickly and it sat for a few months until I took it to the cottage with me and thought it would be a great idea to have a little clothesline photo shoot.  Big mistake.
   

The pictures are pretty, but the quilt top frayed and had to be repaired.  I could not get myself to do it, so I set it aside until the following winter.  Lesson learned: Do not hang an unfinished top on the clothesline on a windy day.

January 2014, I got a fantastic idea for the quilt back.  My long time readers may remember this word scramble: B  D  E  G  G  H  I  I  N  N  N  N  O  O  O  T  T  U.

Which of course, as the title of this post suggests, spells...

I was pretty pleased with my efforts, but the quilt sat for another two years.

December 2015 -  with the encouragement of my visiting mom, I replaced the frayed pieces.  She convinced me it wouldn't take long, and of course she was right!  Then I showed her my "bonne nuit good night" section for the back, and the first thing she says was: "why would you want to hide that on the back?"  And of course, mom was right again!  Just a matter of ripping one row and adding a row with the message, right?

Wrong! The message almost took the whole width of the quilt - which was fine when it was hidden in the back, but would not look good on the quilt top as it was wider than the bed itself, and the beginning and the end would be falling on each side of the bed, so that you would only see "ne nuit  good ni".  Not cool.

Some letters could be narrowed easily, other had to be redone, spacing had to be adjusted... with little spare fabric to play with (most of them used to be fat quarters and were all used in the quilt).  I also switched the English and French sides of the message, to correspond to the English and French sides of the bed. Oh! What work, but well worth it.

I plowed through, sewed the top back together, produced a backing and sandwiched and quilted it, the largest quilt I've ever quilted (96" x 97").

Large loops for the main part...

 ...and tiny loops in the beige background to make the message pop out.

The binding was again another challenge.  I wanted a single fabric - not scrappy - and something that was already in the quilt.  Linda came to the rescue with a piece of that Amy Butler green/pink floral which, combined with my own leftovers was just enough to make 386" of binding.  Thanks Linda!

I've said many times that I truly enjoy hand sewing the binding, and it's one of the things I usually save for working on the plane when I travel, so I had fully anticipated working on this quilt on my recent trip to Toronto.  Until I realized a 97" x 96" is so huge, I need a big duffle bag to carry it!  So this quilt did not travel to Toronto.  It went to waiting rooms, swimming lessons, a guild meeting, a family dinners, gymnastic class, and even a car ride.

It's been finished for over a week but I had to wait for a sunny day for proper pictures.

February in Canada, no snow... really, really odd

Ah, the texture...

Little upside down action...

On that note, Bonne Nuit / Good Night to you!

 
Linking up to TGIFF hosted by Laura at Quokka Quilts and Finish it up Friday at Amanda Jean's Crazy Mom Quilts. Hop over to see what others have finished!