Johnny's quilt

A friend has said that I am exhibiting the early signs of "quilter's fever," I don't know if it has quite reached that stage yet, but I have enjoyed making two blankets now. I will say that they are an exercise in frustration however. I enjoy the finished product, but the process was frustrating, especially with the most recent one.

Johnny was jealous of Ben's blanket and really wanted one of his own. I had two friends give me some scrap fabric and out of it, I was able to find enough to make a crazy quilt for Johnny. 

 The fabric squares all cut and ready to put together. It is an eclectic collection, but still lots of fun and included a lot of his favorite things.

 MacKayla is my quilt helper and she really liked helping to place the squares out. We wanted to have only one block of each in every row and column. She was great at helping to do it and said it was like a giant Sudoku game (which she loves.)

 Johnny had to get into the picture, here the rows have been sewn together.

 Here is the front of the quilt done, the rows and columns are all put together.

 Johnny went to the fabric store with me to get the fabric for the back of the quilt. This sports one was the first one that we saw, he took it off the shelf and carried it through the rest of the store. We looked at several others, but he really wanted the ball fabric, and as that is his favorite thing in the world, that is what we went with.

 Here is the front of the quilt after it had been quilted. MacKayla helped pick out the stitch that we used to quilt it. I liked that it was a bit more substantial, but that caused major problems when we had an issue. Somehow, despite pinning, the back of the blanket bunched up while sewing and I had to take out the first three rows that I had done, at that point I really regretted not doing a simple stitch. Also don't look at the picture too close up, the stitches aren't even and not quite straight, but hey, it's for a two year old and he thinks that I am awesome.

 

The finished quilt. I was very intimidated to use the bias tape, but it went pretty well. My only real complaint here, was in quality control. The 2 bias tapes were the same size, style, and color, but were not folded evenly. The first one was done just right and was a nice tight fit, the second one was wider and you can tell at the point where the two meet. Oh well, right.

Johnny finally getting to hold his blankie. He watched rather patiently for the making of most of it, but he really wanted to touch it. Finally today as I was putting the finishing touches on he asked if it was Johnny's blankie, and when I said it was he was excited. He is now happily sleeping in his bed with his new blankie. I certainly hope he appreciates it.