Quilt Stories - Nico's Star 2015

A new grandbaby boy was on the way!

And I wanted to make him a quilt.

I had a bit of a brainstorm.... autographed squares.  I took 6.5-inch squares of Kona Snow and fabric markers to my daughter's baby shower.  The guests all designed a square for baby Nico.

I had also found a line of fabric in colors that I thought my daughter would like and bought some yards and half-yards to play with (and a coordinating solid brown) ... because I had no idea what I wanted to make.

Hmmm... where to start.....  I thought a star would be nice....  or maybe a pinwheel...  so first thing was to make some half-square triangles.  I wanted them to square out between 6-6.5-inches so I cut 7-inch squares and made a bunch of them.  I chose 4-5 of the fabrics.... cut 7-inch strips (then squares), cut the brown also and started making half-square triangles......    BUT

I saw that I was not going to have enough brown for the whole quilt.... so I only did half of each chosen color with that brown.. and had to hunt for something similar when I went to town...  Yikes - I found a suitable brown that did not match Brown #1.. but decided that it was a seriously scrappy quilt anyway so I forged ahead!  Bought 2 yards so I wouldn't run out again and kept moving!

Anyway - I got the triangle squares and the plain squares done enough to play - and chose a star design.  And pieced the top in time for the shower (Go Me!)

(You can see the 2 browns in the photo.. I alternated the blocks so it works!  My favorite quilt saying is: "There are no mistakes... just creative design changes!")

3 weeks later, baby Nico made his appearance.... and I pieced some rail fence strips to put between squares on the back.. and we rounded up a few more squares from visitors and relatives... which took another 2 months....

And then pulling it all together and figuring out how to quilt it.... took a little longer.. but he had his new quilt by the time he was 5 months old - so.... not too bad :-)

the back

I had one too many autograph blocks including my own so I used mine as the label!

This is not a complicated quilt but I am really proud of it.  It's the first finished quilt where I chose the fabrics and played and came up with my own design with no pattern.  The quilting is basic grid along the square block lines.