The finished quilt

When we left for the beach, the quilt looked like this - quilted and binding machine-attached to the front and waiting to be hand-stitched to the back.After a lot of this (thanks Dad for the picture!)...The quilt now looks like this! We dropped it off at the post office on the way home from the beach, and my brother should have gotten it yesterday when he flew out to Utah for the start of his freshman year. It's only the fourth quilt I've ever made, and given it's size and the orneriness of my sewing machine, I'm pretty pleased with the final product. I think Mike is too. I'm already mulling over the next quilt, which will be much smaller and have less royal blue :)

The quilt is all quilted, the binding is sewn on the front, and all that remains is to hand-stitch the binding to the back. Yea! And Mike gets to see the almost finished product tonight. Hopefully he approves. Even if he doesn't, it's still his.

Why does Mike get to see it tonight? Well, it's that time of year again - my family beach week! We've been going to the beach every summer since 1982, and we're leaving as soon as the kids wake up from their naps. Nathan has been wearing his "swimming soups" since he woke up yesterday morning and can't wait to go splashing in the waves and play with his dump truck in the sand. Emily can't wait to eat sand. Chad can't wait for a few days off of work. And I can't wait to just go play at the beach with all my favorite people :) See you next week, and I promise pictures when we return!