A Quilt for Baby Brady

This is a quilt that I have been working on for a loooooong time.  It's one that I've been picking up and putting back down for far too long.  I'm embarrassed to admit that this is for a baby who was born in July.  Yes - I'm that far behind on my baby gifts.

I'll take you back through my process.  Baby Brady's mom had commissioned me to make some pillows for his nursery back in the spring.  She sent me extra crib sheets to use as the fabric (the polka dot print.)  I had a few scraps leftover, so I paired them with a few other coordinating fabrics I had on hand to create a very basic patchwork quilt top.  Here is the quilt taped to my floor, pin basted and ready for quilting.

Since I had done such a simple patchwork design, I decided to get creative with my quilting to give this quilt more visual interest.  That's how this little guy earned the name "The Snowball Quilt."

I decided to use three different quilting designs so each square is unique.  This is basically one big nine-patch. Three squares are quilted in a design I'll call "square within a square," three are done with vertical lines and three are done with diagonal lines.  

Shortly after I started this process, I realized just how crazy long it was going to take me.  I liked the way it was looking, but I'll admit that I thought, "what have I gotten myself into???"

But I'll also admit that I'm pretty happy with the end result.  It was actually a lot of fun to shift my focus from more involved piecing to more involved quilting.  And it gave me lots of time to practice my straight-line quilting techniques.

I used my embroidery machine to make a little patch with baby's name on it and sewed that to one of the squares.

I hope Brady and his parents enjoy this little quilt as much as I enjoyed making it.