the new gift idea....half a gift!

My mother.in.law's birthday was on April 2nd and we all got together at my sister.in.law's house to celebrate. I'll admit that I'm not that good at picking out gifts for others. Somehow, my mind always wanders off to generic ideas and sometimes I can't think of a thing to get someone. So after Christmas this past December, when I struggled to figure out what to get friends and family, I decided to approach gift giving from a different angle.

Since I've brought out my crafty side most recently, I thought that it would be fun to start making gifts for people. Many times, there are so many things that I'd just love to do and work on but when I actually think of the finished product, I usually don't see myself actually using said item or I don't have a place for it in my house. So because of this, I don't even bother. Then I started to actually see a certain person in a certain project and suddenly I realized that I could have the best of both worlds or have my cake and eat it too. I could fill my crafting urge and have a ton of fun doing it AND have the perfect gift to give someone! THIS my friends, was something very exciting to me.

With April 2nd fast approaching, I started to think of what we could get mom, mother.in.law and grandma for her birthday. Of course, out of habit, my mind started gravitating towards genericville (not a real word...but don't you think it should be?....) and then I stopped myself. I remembered my 'making gifts for people' idea and decided that that's what I was going to do. But what to make? I only had a little over two weeks to find a project, complete it and give it away. Then I saw this adorable sewing project from a little blog that I follow, Moda Bake Shop. I immediately thought of my mother.in.law. She was written all over it and I just had to make it for her. The only problem was....I've never made a quilt before nor have I any clue on how to make one. And then my 'half of a gift' idea came to mind.

The top of the quilt looked easy enough to accomplish. I mean, I'm pretty darn good at sewing a straight line and my mother.in.law has made a quilt before, tons in fact, so why not make the quilt top and she can finish the rest? So I headed to JoAnn's and purchased a bunch of colorful fabric to make a quilt top. That night, I started by cutting out all the hearts, one by one. The next night I cut out all the strips of fabric for each section and used fusible web to attach the hearts. Then on the third night, I sewed all strips together, sewed on all the ric rac and voila! Project accomplished! I need to insert here that the 'voila' moment occurred at very early morning hour, very.early. But it was done and I was happy and I couldn't wait to see my mother.in.law's face when she opened it....and I had to wait two days to do it!

Then Friday came and I wanted to dress up the package real nice because to me, this was a special gift, it had to be pretty on the outside too. I went to Hallmark and purchased some cute wrapping paper, in the baby section (they always have such cute prints in that section!) and went home to wrap it. This is how it all turned out!













Happy Birthday Marsha!