Citrus quilt - exceedingly quick and astoundingly dirty

I've never been much of a fan of the phrase 'quick and dirty'. I hate it. But for once, I can't escape it. Here we are. Littlest's eighth birthday quilt. It is, as Lucy might say, a ta-da moment. The cold February light has done nothing but bleach out the colours, but take it from me - it is undeniably cheery in real life.

To put this in context, Littlest's birthday was back in January. Right at the start of January. And on this day, we went to the fabric shop to choose some fat quarters for the quilt I'd offered to make her.

I was really, really delighted with the colours she picked. Her head wasn't turned by the pinks and the flowers. She wanted green, and she came away with greens, oranges, more greens: even a little brown.

I had a few Liberty print scraps to add to the mix, and it gave me the chance to sneak in a few strips of this dress - the most eye-wateringly expensive piece of clothing I can remember buying.

(One day, a long, long time ago, we set off on a trip to a Distant Market Town to buy a pair of shoes for Eldest. The shoe shop - an eye-wateringly expensive one which stocked European styles - was the only place we'd found that could reliably provide attractive shoes that fitted over her platform-heeled orthotic inserts. It was, however, a journey of an hour-and-a-half, on a hot day, and during the course of this journey the tiny Littlest Latte consumed two juice boxes, arriving at her destination utterly saturated with wee.

Of course this was the day we hadn't brought a change of clothes. And so, we found ourselves in the Distant Market Town, which really should have been named The Distant Upmarket Town, in the eye-wateringly expensive children's clothes shop, buying the above dress. It has faded with washing, but still holds memories of Littlest looking utterly, utterly gorgeous, in the citrus-y colours which have always suited her, and which she so seldom chooses.)

So. The colours were chosen. Littlest was excited; the weather was still cold. And then the sewing machine broke and I had to wait four weeks to have it working again.

I spent some of that time researching how to make the quickest quilt in the world. (An eight-year-old doesn't deserve to wait months after a birthday to receive a present.) And I found it on A Cuppa and a Catch Up, which has a fantastic tutorial for quilting as you go.

I cut out all the strips whilst waiting for the sewing machine man to call. I sewed them in long, endless ribbons together, in the same order over and over again. I fixed the backing (a super-cheap bargain cotton in the sale for £2 a metre) onto the wadding (a super-cheap IKEA throw. I've read Stern Warnings about using fleece, but both Nina and Nancy said it would be fine, and it was. Quilting, to be honest, starts to get a bit out of my league if the wadding costs more than the fabric.)

And then the machine came back and I sewed and I sewed and I sewed and I sewed and I sewed. And something grubby got onto the quilt - machine oil? ink from Mr Coffee's printing press? I don't know, but it came off with washing up liquid and a 30 degree wash, and a quilt was born.

I even had enough strips to make a matching cushion.

 And despite the dirt, and the rushing rushing rushing, and the glitches in the stitching and the fact that in a couple of places, the backing isn't exactly flat... I am officially the Best Mummy in the World. And despite all my assurances to the contrary, I am informed that no-one else's Mummy could ever make anything so lovely out of Sewing.

So there.