Colin's Quilt

I finally made the time to finish my son's first quilt not all that long ago.  It took a while with everything else I was doing, but he now has a place to play and drool on.  :) 

 I was having a hard time picking THE quilt pattern for him.  I really wanted a sailboat pattern, but the ones I found I wasn't happy with and so I ultimately settled on a pattern I had used for my friend's little girl.  I opted for frogs instead of butterflies this time, but it was still fun trying to pick out all of the fabric I was going to need.  You really need to have a clear vision of what you want your finished product to look like to pick good fabrics.  So far I'd like to think I have had pretty good luck.  :)

Over a couple of weeks I did all of the cutting and initial block making.  This quilt takes a few steps just to get to the image show below.  For each of those green-blue-white blocks, I had to sew two larger blocks into two smaller squares for each color combination (green-blue and blue-white) and divide them each time.  Then for the final assembly, sew the two different combinations together and split them once more to get the final block.  It's a lot of small steps, but if you find your groove it doesn't take too long.  

The easier pieces of the block are just the straight white blocks and even the motif centered blocks.  The motif centered (frogs) are a little tricky just to make sure you have enough fabric and can get the character centered how you want them.  This one was slightly easier than the butterflies, but still a bit tricky.

Once you get all 9 blocks together you get the one bigger block which becomes the true block you work into your pattern.  I alternated the pieced blocks with what are referred to as "snowball" blocks.  I guess someone thought that's what they looked like at one point.  In any case, once you get the lined up and sewn together, you start to see a fun larger pattern emerge.

The final top layer step is to add borders.  They really make the quilt come together and give it definition.  Once you get that part together, you can start to assemble the quilt with your top layer (quilted), the filling (typically cotton batting), and then your backing (typically a solid fabric).  This was the first quilt I decided to machine together, so it was a bit intense putting it through my machine.  But the good news is, I now know I can do it, and it gives it a somewhat professional look to it.

Quilting truly is a labor of love.  I am sure my little man is going to make all kinds of messes on this quilt, but I also know that it will be a keepsake no matter what shape it gets to be.  :)