Finished Blanket

Remember this?

 Well, I finished it (finally!) and gave it to Elora for Christmas.

And now when I tuck her into bed, it's with her very own blankie,

 made just for her,

  by her mommy.

I hope that one day, she'll use it to wrap up her baby.  Or at least her baby dolls.  As to her quilt, I've ordered a frame for hand quilting, so I can't move forward with it until that gets here.  And then, I will be a lean, mean, quilting machine!

Don't forget, if you haven't already voted for a name for my Etsy shop, please do so!  (And to those of you who've already voted, if you voted before I changed the poll you should vote again.  I had to reset it to add the other options, but I think it's better now.)

Elora's Quilt

The pillow (pre-embroidery) and the unfinished quilt top:

The finished quilt top, before I did the embroidery on the letters:

As soon as I spread it out on the floor, Elora had to come check it out, and play with it.

I'm half done with the embroidery on the pillow, and mostly done with the embroidery on the letters. Then I get to put the back on and get started on the quilting. I'm doing it by hand, so wish me luck!

This is a picture that Brandon snapped while I was trying to eat a string cheese. He'd already snapped a few at this point, and I'd just figured out that he was doing it, hence the odd smile.

Anyway, I thought it was kind of a good picture of me, so I cropped it down and played with it a bit in Photoshop. You can see the before and after, it really makes a big difference, doesn't it? I used the Perfect Portrait action from Coffeeshop, along with a few of my own touches. I'm really getting to know the program, and though there is still a lot to learn, I'm very pleased with how far I've come.