Tree

I gave birth to Q Man 6 weeks before my friend gave birth to her daughter, Miss A. Of course, I made a quilt for Miss A. Well, technically I’m still making it. I gave it to my friend at her shower. In February.  I took the unfinished top back from my friend the other day (Indian giver!) so I could attempt to get it finished before her daughter goes to college. Seriously. It’s taking forever but time is an extremely limited commodity right now.

Little Mister quickly grabbed the quilt from the bag. He ran around with it like he was wearing a cape. It was pretty darn cute.

Then he got bored

And I snapped a few detail shots while the gettin’ was good!

Not the greatest photo, but you get the idea – wrinkled corners and all.

Since I have been trying to talk about the process here’s where it all started. My friend has some wallie art in her daughter’s room. It was the inspiration for the baby quilt. Here it is*:

So the wall art was the starting point. Once I decided to make a tree I needed it on a background. I didn’t want to put the tree on a solid piece of fabric. I wanted more depth. I have a friend that (I think) makes some really cool quilts. I love how she pieces her backgrounds and they were the inspiration for the background of Miss A’s quilt. I drew the tree (several iterations, really) and all the other parts** on newsprint before copying and pasting them onto the background.

Yellow seemed like the obvious choice to me.  Miss A’s room is brightly colored and I wanted the reds, pinks, greens and blues to show up against the background. No pink overload.  I used Steam a Seam Lite to fuse everything. I just love how you can get all your parts to stick to the background and move them a little, too, before deciding on the final placement and ironing them down. I’m pretty pleased with how the quilt looks so far. Just need to add a few things – like the bottom border!

* yes, I took the photo from the website. Going into baby A’s room to snap a photo of a tree decal while juggling four or five schedules is a feat nearly impossible

** thank you Pottery Barn for having such great and easy modern forms in your repertoire that I could use for inspiration for the butterfly and owl. The wren, well, that was all me.