Quilt in a Day

Unusually for me I can actually link up to the wonderful Finish it up Friday because  I do have a finish - in fact two.  Yay!

It can take me ages to make something and blog it, but I rashly said that I would make my littlest nephew a quilt for Christmas and as I have been faffing about for far too long the day came (yesterday) when I really had to get on with it, so apart from cutting the squares the night before, this whole quilt was assembled in the time between school drop off and pick up!

To my surprise this pic was automatically "Awesomed" by Google with a snow animation when I uploaded it - it freaked me out but now I know it's not a virus I quite like it - if it's annoying, let me know and I'll turn it off!

The quilt is obviously very simple - I cut 9 inch squares from fat quarters, and arranged them in a random pattern - and the quilt isn't bound because I thought a binding would have looked too busy.  Instead it's just sewn inside out and turned.

I used two ranges of fabrics - the one I really couldn't resist was Rebekah Ginda's Robotic for Birch fabrics, because one of the robots reminds me of my nephew.  I used a snippet to make a label on the back

and managed to line it up so that the stitching captured the same little robot on the front.

I bought a handful of fat quarters and planned to find some co-ordinating fabrics but then I miraculously discovered that I had forgotten about some Robert Kauffman robots, cogs and circuit boards which had come via my mother-in-law from the Fat Quarterly Retreat.  

The colours were just perfect too - hooray! My stash isn't very big so I don't discover things I have forgotten about in it very often!   Grandpa is spending Christmas with his grandsons and I'm hoping that, as a scientist, he will approve of the wrenches and cogs, circuit boards, beakers and microscopes.

I incompetently doubled up my order of rocket fabric but it turned out to be just right for the back.

Rather than quilt it I decided to tie it using one of the few fancy stitches on my machine - you can see it below.  I sewed these little stars at approximately 4 inch intervals, and although I have yet to see how it holds up to washing I really like the effect which is very soft.

The leftovers made a cushion cover for his brother too, just in case he was envious!

Some of the pieces were too small to make blocks, so I made some blocks of quarter squares.  It is simply echo quilted a quarter inch from the seams and has a simple envelope back in trusty Ikea Nummer fabric.

Two presents ticked off the list - I don't like to think how many more there are to go!