Work in Progress: Baby Blanket

Next week we're taking a family vacation to Williamsburg, VA. While we're up in that part of the country, we're going to swing on over to visit some dear friends who live just outside of Baltimore. They had their first baby this summer, a sweet little baby boy. We sent them a custom made stuffed animal earlier, but we never really did any kind of large present for them because things were so hectic with my grandfather being sick. But now since we're going to be staying in their house for two days, I thought I'd make a little baby quilt for them.

Remember my last post about keeping things simple? I don't think this falls under that heading, though I am working on making this project as quick & stressfree as possible. It certainly helps that Liv is going to school three days a week now.

I'm actually nearly done piecing the top, but I'll make you wait to see that until it's entirely pieced. (Hopefully by tomorrow afternoon!) Today I'll show you the sketch of the basic design. But first I have to tell you the story of how the design came to be.

The design is actually courtesy of little girl Liv. I had taken a little sketchbook and crayons with me to the park one day, thinking that I could play around with some quick & easy designs while she was playing. I had gotten two of them done, neither to my complete satisfaction, when Liv comes walking up. I had just drawn a third rectangle outline, but had not filled anything in yet.

Liv: Oh, you're coloring at the park!
Me: Yeah, I'm trying to figure out a design for Baby W's quilt.
Liv: Oh
Me (pointing to the two that I'd already done): Which do you like the best?
Liv (pointing to the empty rectangle): Why isn't there anything there?
Me: Oh, I'm still working on that. I'm thinking of what to put there.
Liv: Here, let me show you what to do.

And with that, the little girl takes the crayons and sketches out the most perfect quilt design. See - I'll show you:



The big blocks of color are actually going to be made up of smaller pieced rows of rectangles. I'm going to use this as an opportunity to burn through some fabric stash, particularly a lot of blues. I somehow have ended up with a large amount of blue blender fabrics, none of them spectacular. Anyway, I dug through my fabric stash and here's what I found that works with the color scheme.



Yeah, that's my foot in the bottom right hand corner.

I'm almost done piecing it all together. When I get that done, I'll post a pic of the finished top.

Oh, and we're leaving next Saturday (as in less than a week from the time I type this). Gotta get this puppy finished up!