Payton's Quilt

Payton is one of the children I babysit. She just turned 10 last week. I asked her if she would be interested in quilting a quilt and entering it into the "Kids can Quilt" Contest at MQX. She was excited to do it. I explained the quilting only is judged so she agreed to use this small pink log cabin quilt I had here. Pink is not her color, but she agreed. She chose a design and I showed her how to work the machine and gave her some pointers.

She diligently practiced every chance she could for two weeks.

She came over yesterday to quilt for real:

Look how serious she is:

Unfortunately we had some tension problems and we called it a day. She was dismayed to learn I had to remove the stitching she already had done. Not as dismayed as I was however. Her 40 minutes of stitching took me 5 hours to frog. I went to bed at 2am, my fingers raw and my eyes burning.

She came over this morning at 11 to give it a go again.

She got right to work:

She noticed that the machine didn't feel right and said it was catching at some points. She described to me what sounded like thread in the wheels so I looked and sure enough....there was thread wrapped around a wheel. When I did a deep knee bend to take a good look I heard my husband say from behind me, "I didn't think you could still do that" (smart ass)
Anyway, I started getting the thread out and Payton took over. She did a good job and cleaned it up and got back to work:


Last row:

Finished at 2pm...NOT BAD!

She wants to make a quilt herself. I told her we will do it this summer when she doesn't have homework most nights. She makes me proud!