a new quilt

Now that my nephew has seen his quilt in person (ok, he's 14 months old, so I'm really talking about his mom), I feel that it's okay to post more pictures and talk about the process. I bought fabric last summer and started cutting. The top and bottom started coming together last October, and the final stitches were sewn this February. I had originally intended this quilt to be a Christmas present, but it ended up being two months late.



  



It all started with this Alexander Henry zoo print fabric I found at Joann's. I adored the print and the colors. I decided to use it as the basis for Mason's quilt.

With that in mind, I went on a search for fabrics that matched the colors in the zoo print. After looking at my options, I decided that I would make one side of the quilt look more like a little kid's quilt using the zoo fabric. I tried to make the other side look like it could be a big-kid's quilt. That way the quilt could 'grow' as Mason grows up.

I admit that I am a total beginner when it comes to making quilts, and there were definitely some problems along the way. For example, my quilt top didn't quite fit the batting size, so the quilt is shorter than it should be (which ends up just making it look longer than it should be).

I didn't buy enough of the zoo print to do the entire back of the quilt, so I bought some coordinating solid fabric and pieced the back side as well as the front side.

Two things I really like about this quilt are also the two things that tie it to Mason's older brother Daniel's quilt (which I can't seem to find any pictures of): the variegated blue thread I used to quilt the layers together comes from the same spool I used for Daniel's quilt, and they both have a square signature label. Although with Daniel's quilt I used fabric marker and actually wrote the label. With Mason's quilt I wrote on the fabric with pencil and embroidered the letters (since I just learned how to embroider).

I also did a much better job with the fabric binding along the edges. I still didn't quite do it as you are supposed to, but it is much, much better than what I did with Daniel's quilt (since I didn't know at the time what I was supposed to do). I still want to rip out the binding on Daniel's quilt and re-do it, but that might be a bit dramatic.
 

 

I wasn't sure about the best way to package it for mailing. I decided to wrap it in brown paper and use a flat-rate box, which ended up being the perfect size.