Anchor's Quilt

I made this quilt for my good friends' baby who was born just a couple weeks ago. It was her third baby and second boy. Their other son received this quilt, (which I just realized has a kind of similar HST design) but I wasn't quilting back when their first kid was born, so I guess I owe her something! To me, there's no better satisfaction than giving a baby quilt. I just love being able to make something that can literally wrap them up in homemade love. And also be rolled around on and spit on and drooled on a lot. 

These fabrics all came from my stash. The color scheme started out with me trying to use up some of my orange. I've found that I like the idea of orange sometimes, if it's a good print I like, but then I have a hard time using it. All but two of the orange prints I started with ended up being edited out, but I love the resulting orange/yellow/gray/teal/navy scheme here. Each of the 9 blocks only used (2) 10" squares. I put them together using this method to get (8) 4.5" HST's. It was the fastest way to do it I've discovered yet, and we all know there are about 79 different ways to make them. And the little size chart is so helpful! My original plan was to make a 9th of each set to go in the middle of the block, but I took the lazy route and decided on white in the middle. So the "window" design was kind of accidental, but I really like it. Add 2" strips of white sashing, and the quilt is about a 44" square.

So after I already had the top of this quilt done, I found out that they were going to name this baby Anchor. ANCHOR! Not only is it a badass name, but one of those pesky orange fabrics I had kept in the line up has tiny anchors all over it! Now I couldn't wait to finish it up and send it. 

At that point, I knew I had to include a little nod to the two siblings' names with these scraps added to the back. I'll just let you guess what those might be  :)

I finished it up with my favorite straight line quilting, about a .5" apart all the way across. I took these pictures before washing, but after I did it crinkled up so softly.

The binding is a Lotta Jansdotter stripe that I got at Sewn Studio. At first I was disappointed that the wavy lines went in the same direction as the binding instead of across it, but the end effect is pretty cool. Stripes in either direction are a always a win for binding.


Now I have two quilt tops done that need quilting before Christmas. Totally seems doable, but then I remember all the other Christmas stuff I have to do! That's all part of the fun of it though, right? (That's what I keep telling myself.) Are any of you still trying to finish up gift quilts this close to C-day?