Preparing Brigitta (and her quilt) for Baptism

I cannot even begin to tell you how happy I was when we found out we were again getting sisters in our ward! Sisters Anderson and Hansen were so wonderful and they came up with the cutest ways to teach Brigitta the gospel. Like a hop scotch to teach her the principles and ordinances.

When she hopped on a square, she turned over the paper which had a simple explanation for each.

They made a puzzle to demonstrate how Christ established his church and then how it broke up.

I loved feeling the Spirit they brought into our home. And I had to smile when I saw one backing the other out. Oh memories!

As much of a joy as Brigitta's lessons with the sisters were, her quilt was a different story. After Ireland's quilt came down to hours before her baptism, I decided to start Brigitta's nice and early. I had the border, the 8 and all the symbols measured and marked out, ready to go. Then in October the church announced they were going to change the Young Women program and I didn't know if the symbol would change. I decided to do as much of the quilt as I could. I finished the RS symbol and CTR shield:

I decided to quilt the angel Moroni while listening to General Conference. I had it all done when they announced they were changing the symbol of the church from that to the Christus under an arch. My heart broke a little- even though I could never quilt that silhouette. It's just way, way too complicated so I probably would have stuck with the angel Moroni anyway but it was still demoralizing to immediately have your hard work outdated. 

News of the new symbol was promised, but with no information, I wanted to work on Brigitta's name. However, I had no fabric for it and since they are considered a non-essential business, all of the fabric stores around here were closed. I called Katrina in desperation. She took a look at what I had and dug into her stash. Mercifully, she mailed me several different options of peach (to counter-balance the massive purple border) and I found one that worked. Of course, it was the polka-dot one and being a perfectionist, those dots had to line up perfectly with the edges of the letters sooo there was a fair amount of trial and error. Brigitta Katrina has sooo many letters in her name! I started with the straight letters like I, T and N first and then moved on to the more complicated and curvy B, G and Rs.

Finally news of the new symbol came out and once we were allowed to go to the Office Depot again, I had it printed up. It was still too small for the space so I had to go back and have it blown up even more. 

Then I had to try and figure out which shades of the rainbow fabric would look best with the colors that were already there. 

This is what I ended up with.

The new symbol is actually much easier to quilt than the old face within the flame. This is all straight lines but the symbol is much wider. The old symbol paired nicely with the angel Moroni because they were both long and slim. Now that angel Moroni looked off balance, but I couldn't do anything about it. I started in on the finishing touches. 

Brigitta's symbol is the forget-me-not and since she is our 3rd child, she needed to have 3 in each corner. Again, Katrina had sent a variety of fabrics and I did a mix of 3 to give it a little more depth. 

Once those were done, I went the rounds about the dove. Should it face in towards the quilt or away? No matter how I tried, it just looked off facing in and so it landed facing out. As I was finished everything up, I again called Katrina in desperation- I still had no way to get fabric and I needed yards and yards of it for a backing. It happened to be her sons birthday but no matter, Katrina marched right over to a fabric store and pulled several options for Brigitta to choose from. She selected a colorful hot air balloon fabric I never, EVER would have even glanced at and Brigitta was in love. I managed to talk Katrina into matching it up and mailing it to the quilter for me to take just one thing off my plate. 

The social distancing signs made me laugh. If only they knew I was perfectly willing to stand at the door and throw the dang quilt at them! I was sooo DONE with working on that thing.

I hadn't been out anywhere in a couple of months and it was like there had been a zombie apocalypse.

The markings on the floor weren't a big deal to me, but it was so strange to push my package through the plastic sheet. 

I can't remember the last time I've been so happy to be rid of something! As arduous a project as Gita's quilt ended up being, she was thrilled to watch the progress and so, so, SO excited to finally have one of her own.