monsters, dinos and vikings!

I know I just posted about this quilt... but here's the full story.

Dana of Old Red Barn Company issued a quilt challenge throw down on Flickr and the timing couldn't have been more perfect.  It was just the inspiration I needed to start a quilt for our friends' soon-to-be-born baby.  Are you a fast sewer?  There's still a few days to get in on the fun.  Challenge accepted!

Picking out the color palette was a challenge in and of itself.  There are so many pretty options, but what to choose for a little boy?  And when I finally settled on dusty greens and yellows {a different palette then what you're seeing here} my fabric options were too limited.  So, I switched to this one...

With a name like that and such playful colors, this was the winner.  And have you seen the cute "boy" fabrics that have blue backgrounds?!  So much fun!

The next step was designing the quilt.  Enter... the internet and microsoft paint.  That might not be the most technical way to design a quilt, but it worked for me.  I found graph paper online and dumped that into a paint canvas.  Then I found each of the fabrics I'd bought and borrowed their images from the web.  Using what I think is called "magic numbers" - blocks with sides of 3" or 6" - I made up the quilt - copy and paste and repeat.

The last step in the design process for me was to plan out how I'd sew the pieces together.  To do this I dropped the whole quilt into a word document and added large rectangles around groupings of the little blocks.  As I went I noticed where I ran into some y-seam issues and tried to rid the quilt of them with a few design tweaks.  But in the end I was left with one y-seam.  Having never done that before I was a bit worried, but surprisingly it wasn't a problem at all.  {beginner's luck?!}

A little cutting and a little sewing later the quilt was all done.  Or so I thought... then Lukas convinced me that it'd look better with some binding.  And he was right {I'm sure he'd want me to add "like always"}.

Blogger’s Quilt Festival Stats

Finished quilt measures about : 36″x 36″
Special techniques used : magic number{?}
Quilted by: me!
Best Category: Baby Quilt

Check out all the beautiful quilts in the Blogger's Quilt Festival!