Our Little Guy....

This may be a long post -- forewarned is forearmed!

This cute little fellow is our only grandchild who we went visit in Canada earlier this month.  While we were there, we were able to give him his gifts for his second birthday as well as his birthday quilt.  How much fun is that!

This was made following the directions in Tonya Ricucci's book, Word Play Quilts, and referencing some of her blog posts.  I have to say this was absolutely one of the "funnest" quilts I've made.  You really only need a ruler to square your blocks once you learn to cut generous strips.  I finally learned to make the outside background strips big enough to be able to square up the blocks and still allow for a seam allowance.  Blocks were not made to a specific size...I just started laying them out and if I needed to make one a bit bigger -- I added a strip of a complementing color.  Did I mention this was fun?

I will say that I never quite got my "N's" exactly right.  As you can see here -- the lower case "n" is pretty good here -- the upper case is not.  In some cases, the lower case "n" looks like it's backward because of my cutting angle.  In that case, I made sure the "f" was clearly lower case to make sure it was "alphabetically" correct.  :-)

In order to have a bit more fun with the back, I ordered five FQs from Spoonflower.  What a great business model.  I won't go into a lot of detail here but if you don't know about them, it's worth hearing their story and seeing what they offer.  I was able to scan their database and order the FQ in science-related fabrics (periodic table, DNA, elements, flame test, and molecules).  These were not for little Finn.  They were really in honor of his parents who are both microbiologists.

I wasn't able to get to Chicago to quilt this so I had to suffer through with some great variegated Valdani thread!  I didn't want a lot of quilting as the words are the stars so it went fast and holds it together.  Definitely not anything fancy.

As you might imagine, custom printed fabric is not cheap so I had to "make do" on the back and maximize the science fabrics!  You've actually seen the back through the pieced wool batting in this post.

As a bonus, since I had to fussy cut the periodic table so it was whole, I was able to salvage almost a complete one (roman numerals are missing at the top in case you aren't a chemist) and create a mug rug for our son.

I will definitely make another quilt with letters -- maybe all Christmas words?  Or family names?  Or friends' names?  I'm not sure but I have lots of wonderful solids and scraps and they will need a home one of these days.

When I look at finished quilts in the past year or so, this seems like a great quilt to enter in Amy's Creative Side and her semi-annual Bloggers Quilt Festival.  It meets all the criteria (it's actually quilted -- I have way too many tops that need attention) and I'll put it in the baby section.  If you have never spent any time looking through her festival, you are in for a treat.  Check out some of the best of the best of the blogging world!

I hope you are working on your "funnest" quilt.  If you're not -- check out Tonya's book and see if this might not be just the ticket for learning something new and creating a one-of-a-kind quilt!

Jan