Yesterday my brother's oldest child, Megan, gave birth to a baby boy - Thomas! He is my brother and his wife's first grandchild - very exciting!

Today I finished this "I Spy" quilt for him. Actually, it has been mostly finished since March. I've just been waiting to learn the baby's name so I could make the label and sew on the binding.

This is the first "I Spy" quilt I've made. I again worked only from fabrics in my stash. The block design was inspired by a quilt I saw online, but I changed it up to work for this project. I decided to alternate rows of large blocks with four-patch blocks in order to use the various focus fabrics optimally. 

I made the surrounding blocks in gray and white because I know that gray is the trendy color for babies right now. After the quilt was almost done, I was pleased when I saw that Megan and Eamonn's registry included many items in gray. I actually went shopping for gray fabric, but didn't find anything I liked, so I used one of the black and white fabrics from my stash that reads as gray.

This quilt, like my previous couple of quilts, has a slight wobble along the edges after sewing on the binding. I did some research today, and I think I will try stay stitching the quilt edge before sewing binding to the next quilt I make.

This quilt is made from an AQS pattern, Vanishing Time. It's another pattern designed to be made from precut 5" squares. But I don't collect or buy those, so this was cut from fabrics in my stash.

I made this lap quilt to give to the second person I've coached in the Habitat for Humanity homebuying program. She recently moved into her house, but because of the pandemic, she has not had a house dedication ceremony and I have not yet visited her. I am looking forward to the day I am able to visit and present her with this quilt.

I really like this pattern. It goes together quickly and easily. The colors in this quilt came out a bit brighter and gaudier than I had imagined. (It looks better in the photo than in real life.) It will certainly liven up a room!

I found a video tutorial for the swirled feather fill that I quilted this with. It uses the "bump-back" feather stitching method which I had never done before. I really like this method for stitching feathers. For me, it seems easier to form pleasing feather shapes this way. I quilted this with Superior Bottom Line thread to achieve a soft "hand" despite the dense quilting, which seemed to work. I think it is a good alternative to #100 silk thread, and way less expensive.

I'm starting this website and journal for myself. I want to keep track of all the quilts I have made and the lessons I've learned along the way. I invariably want to remember how I did something on a previous quilt and I never have a good memory or good notes to help me recall.

There are so many little details involved in the making of each quilt. I hope this journal will help me capture them.

This post is the date on which this Journal was started. It is a project I've been thinking about for many years. Now, between the pandemic and recovering from surgery seemed like the perfect time to get this going.

FYI, I back-dated the journal entries for my quilts finished prior to this date so they can be browsed by year using the Archives links on the right. I dated the older quilts all in the month of December just to make browsing by year easier.