Happy Birthday to Me

Last year for my birthday, I bought myself a present.  I have been known to trawl Etsy on the regular in search of vintage quilt tops that I can finish and quilt myself.  It's a really inexpensive way to collect vintage quilt tops (which I can't get enough of) but more importantly it's an opportunity to practice my quilting skills on a top that I'm not terribly committed to since I didn't spend hours piecing it myself.

So last year I found this guy right around my birthday and I couldn't say no.

It took me a long time to quilt it up because other projects and because I always try to push my quilting skills a bit when I do projects like this, so it always takes a ton of time. I finally found some patterns I was pleased with and some techniques I was able to *just* scrape by at.

The quilt had a very ugly white border and I went back and forth about whether to just remove it (especially because it was fairly crooked and a little stained.)

In the end, I decided to keep it and I'm glad I did because the borders are my favorite part now.

I had to have striped binding because I just can't resist a good striped binding.

Here's the scrappy backing that is mainly made up of vintage sheets.

A view of the whole quilt.

And here it is in its new home alongside the sweet Maneki Neko pillow that I made awhile back!