The Finished Baby Boy Quilt and Free-Cut Strips

The baby quilt is all done finally. It's bound, washed and even has a label! The binding was the last little detail to get figured out and luckily I had the perfect fabric waiting in the wings. On its own, it was an uninspiring piece of fabric, but for the purposes of this quilt? Just what was needed.

Grandsons baby quilt is done!

I struggled with this quilt all along. Mostly because baby quilts can be difficult for me these days. There's just no room for expanding on the original idea and that just feels a little suffocating! And it was a boy quilt so that feels even harder. As per usual, I gathered together fabrics from what was at hand. Then I went looking for more.

Simple quilting here in this area

I was able to use a couple fatquarters my mom gave me early this spring and also, managed to buy just a couple pieces that seemed necessary to convey the color palette my DIL wanted. When the quilt top stage was finally achieved, I have to admit to feelings of abject failure. Why oh why didn't I just keep going with the overall block theme and leave off the outside border inclusion? 

Want to know a secret? Because it was a very old fabric that I was quite determined to use up and this seemed like the best quilt opportunity ever. Huh. So muleheaded when I get an idea in my head. Was it worth it? Hmmm.... Ill let you decide.

Decided to add more quilting texture into the border 

Thankfully, after the quilting texture jumped into the quilt and the washing revealed the quilty goodness, I was able to stand back and view the quilt a little more kindly. Yes, it could have been better, but overall, it's a warm, boyish looking quilt. Goal accomplished. After all, a baby quilt doesn't have to be the best of all of our efforts. It just has to be sweet, cozy, cuddly looking and not too special to be used!

Crumpled and cozy looking

Bonus, my DIL seemed very, very happy with it! Gotta love that. Goes wonderfully well with the newly finished baby room decor of highland cows and little cowboys.*sigh  Also, what a relief to know that even though it was late by my standards, it was good timing for her.

A little bit of the back showing

In other news, our daughter gifted us with a trip to Alberta, Canada. We drove up to Banff {with her} from our home here in Washington. Very fast trip, but such a lovely drive and all the mountains and glacier fed lakes that we saw were just incredible. We were in awe! Wish we could have had more time to explore, but it was definitely a trip that we will treasure forever.

Lake Louise, Canada

I know this will make some of you uncomfortable, but we are actually quite poor at the moment. Which made the trip all the sweeter as it wasn't something we would have been able to do on our own! Though my husband is doing better now, he has had lots of sickness in the last several years with this past winter being the absolute worst. We really almost lost him and so our time together seems very precious. All the lost work, together with the poor economy, rising inflation etc. and we are just struggling financially. As I'm sure others are as well. I mean, have you noticed the price of groceries and fuel?

Got to start somewhere!

Which brings me to quilting. So very thankful for my totes of fabric. Even without buying a single piece of fabric, I can probably keep making quilt tops for at least a couple years. They might be 'interesting' color palettes, but then, that's my thing, right? No worries there. And then there is the bins of scrap fabric. Surely that could keep me occupied for another year or two? Ha! Not that I'm complaining. It is what it is.

The completed slabs of fabric strips for cross-cutting

I came home from the trip with an overwhelming need to get busy in the quilt room. Kind of like an ache in my heart just to play with fabric. I wandered around sort of aimless though, until finally making myself pick a project and sticking to it. Can't imagine why I landed on a project that featured so much blue, can you? 

Getting the baskets joined together

I free-cut strips until I had enough to make at least ten slabs of the mixed blue and violet fabrics. As always, it was tricky getting started, not knowing how exactly to set things up in order to not waste fabric. Eventually I decided that these final strip sets needed between two to three strips of blue for every addition of the violet ones. I know they are a little blendy looking in the blue sections, but that is by design. Hopefully this results in a calmer, cozier vibe for the baskets without competing too much for imminence.  

Each row of baskets will be slightly staggered if I can just figure out how to do the layout. Then there will be a section to the right with more of the dark brown fabric {no baskets at all}. This will be the 'background area' where I intend to cut out and applique a largish folky looking tree and perhaps a bird or two. It's all doodled onto a piece a paper, but putting it into fabric is wonderfully challenging as always....