Baby Sam's Quilt

This quilt was a little late getting to it's brand new baby tiny person, but I don't think he minded too much. Sam is our besets friends' new baby. He's put them over the two-kid-line both us and his parents never thought we'd cross. And we are over here watching in awe as they make it look totally easy :) We are so happy he is here, and I just had to make him a quilt of course. His mom showed me some colors she might like, and I honestly can't remember how closely I stuck to what we discussed... probably not all that close!





I pulled everything for this quilt out of my stash, and the scheme started out with a lot of Carolyn Friedlander's Botanics line. It's my favorite fabric line that's come out in a long time and I've used it so many ways lately. To that I added some Lush Uptown, a few Joel Dewberry print, and other scraps that fit the scheme.

I knew I wanted to do a simple log cabin quilt.  I decided to give it dimension by putting darker fabrics in the center and going lighter as the blocks grew out. The picture above is my progress as shown on Instagram (@alittlegressica) a couple months ago. I had done the darker value centers and then the layers of medium values around that, but hadn't added the final round of super light prints and linens.




The back is this amazing fabric called Shetland Flannel by Robert Kaufman (purchased at Sewn of course, along with most everything else in the quilt.) It's super soft but also has a subtle herringbone texture in the weave. And the fibers going in each direction are two different colors, kind of like shot cotton. This one is blue combined with a  citron-y yellow, and the light teal it makes is just perfect.

I kept the quilting pretty simple on this one so it would stay soft and flimsy. At first, I regretted not doing my favorite quilting- dense straight lines. But now that I see these pictures, I like the effect the large cross hatch has on the log cabin blocks. Sometimes keeping it simple works best.





The binding is probably my favorite print from Botanics. Even baby boys need a little metallic gold in their lives right? Fabric designers, please make more prints in this dark gold color. I need them all.

So baby Sam finally has a handmade quilt to hang out with. I really really love how this one came out and I might have to make another quilt in these colors for me to keep!