Grandbaby Quilt #1

I suppose “grandbaby” isn’t applicable to my grandchildren anymore and especially not the eldest, G-man, who is now in 6^th grade.  While not a clone of his father, he is enough like my son that I feel as if I know him.  Born while I was in grad school and with whom I practiced giving my first preschool assessment, G-man had a distinct personality from Day One.  An avid birdwatcher, nature guy, soccer player, coin collector, and general all-around cutie, it was relatively easy to think of where to go with a quilt for him.

I selected a bundle of woodsy/nature-y green batik fat quarters and the Twisted Turning Twenty pattern (lower right corner of the book cover) from Tricia Cribb’s book: Turning Twenty Just Got Better.

This was my first time doing a "forced choice" with fabrics into light/dark piles.  May I say that some fat quarters went equally well in both?  What a task that was!  Fortunately the cutting and sewing of said FQs went much more smoothly.

After I had the blocks laid out on the floor of the living room, I discovered something about quilt making that I didn’t expect…  that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.  While the fabrics were gorgeous and the pattern was cool, somehow… the quilt was more than those two components added together.  While looking at the blocks, a name for the quilt came to me… and each time I looked at it, I was even more certain of the name for the quilt.

While I can manage smaller quilts on my trusty Bernina 1230, there was no way I was going to be able to woman-handle that much material in, under, around, and through a domestic sewing machine with a 7.25” arm.  Therefore, the grandbaby quilts were quilted by checkbook.  And, no, House Dragon, I am not going to purchase another machine!   *lol*

These photos were taken in the back yard one afternoon in late November when the sun was intense.  Hanging the quilt on the clothesline was the only way I could get a decent shot so please understand that the fabric colors are very different from real life.  I’m including a photo of the quilt label, taken inside, so you can get an idea of the true colors…  Carl at Linderella’s Quilt Works (my local quilt shop, or LQS) referred to the color combo as camouflage.

Here's a close-up of some of the batik fabrics...

Digression of the Day:  Part of the time I was working on his quilt, G-man was off at Boy Scout camp in the mountains of North Carolina.  Using scraps (Yes!  I have fabric scraps now!) and instructions obtained from the internet, I made my first postcard to send him.

G-man keeps the framed postcard in his room.