A quilt for my great-niece

 

 

A few months ago, I made a pair of twin baby quilts using Sassafras Lane's Lullaby Lane quilt pattern.  As I was working on those quilts, I realized Michael Miller's Wee Wander collection would work well with this pattern.  So when my niece announced she was expecting a baby girl, I started this quilt for her.

 

 

The panel fit the pattern perfectly, and the firefly fabric worked well for fussy-cutting squares for the border.  I tried a couple of new-to-me quilting designs, with swirls in the sky and a grassy pattern for the foreground.  I originally quilted the fill only within a quarter inch or so of the characters, but that left them a little puffy for my taste.  I decided to try outlining them with charcoal thread, not knowing whether it would work or not.  I was quite pleased with the result:

I used a trapunto technique under the "A" and "M" of the applique.  For the top and bottom borders, I pondered feathers or scrolls, but I couldn't work out how to do them around the flying geese.  I eventually came up with the idea to repeat the triangles across the borders with the quilting.

I added magenta binding and a pinkish backing to make it more "girly."

As I learned with the twin quilts, it doesn't take much additional fabric to get a second quilt with this design, especially if you shop at places with half-yard minimum cuts. (As long as you don't do a lot of fussy cutting, or make cutting mistakes. Ahem.) So there just might be another Lullaby Lane quilt in my future. And Michael Miller's Cotton Couture in Limeade could make for a great sashing with these prints; it's a perfect lightning-bug green. Just sayin'.

We were able to deliver the quilt in person just before Christmas.  What a treat it was to see and hold my new great-niece at only a few days old.

I'm linking up with crazy mom quilts for Finish It Up Friday.