The first of two

Aidan’s quilt top is finished.  I put it on his bed to get an idea how it will look in his room.  None of the fabrics are pre-washed, so it is likely to shrink and get that delightfully-crinkly look, assuming I manage to quilt it well.

If you find quilt-making intimidating, I highly recommend using pre-cut squares like I have here.  Sewing together an 8×11 grid of squares is a relatively simple task.

I based this particular design on the (much smaller) version I made for my nephew for Christmas.  The original quilt used charm packs (5-inch squares) from various American Jane collections.  I loved the colors and hated to box up the little quilt and give it away, so I decided to make twin-bed-sized versions for both of my own boys, the biggest difference being that I used layer cakes (10-inch squares) instead.

Aidan’s quilt will be primarily Blue, Green, and White while Eamonn’s will be primarily Red, Yellow, and Brown.  Let me tell you, this wreaks havoc with my usual system – I always buy or make red things for Aidan and blue things for Eamonn – it helps me to know at a glance whose things are whose.  But Aidan saw me arranging the squares and professed his love for the blue arrangement.  Darn it.  I gave in, but I’m making myself twitch less about it by throwing a few red squares into Aidan’s arrangement, and planning the backing and the binding to be red as well.   I’ll do the same thing in blue for Eamonn.

What remains for this quilt is to sew the backing pieces together (a much simpler prospect, as I only plan to use four large pieces of fabric for it), make the sandwich with the batting, do the quilting (probably the same straight lines I’ve always been decent at doing) and then sew the binding on (half with machine, half by hand).  That’s still a significant amount of work, but it will be worth it, I think.

First, though, I want to make Eamonn’s quilt top.  I’ve arranged the squares in the order I want them, but I haven’t started the sewing at all.  My goal is to have these finished before the dog days of summer, when it will be too hot to use them.  That should be attainable, if I can manage not to be distracted too much!