granny.

I think I'm in love.  Granny and I spent some quality time together this weekend quilting away, and I am so so pleased with how she has come together.

This quilt is based on Jolene's granny squares block tutorial, and of course I had to doctor it just a little, deciding to omit the sashing between the blocks and instead strip piece the quilt with just one white square to separate the blocks.



I was really unsure of how I wanted to quilt this, and kept on coming back to my original idea of clean and simple straight lines on each side of the seams.  I thought about some sort of intricate curvy free motion quilting, but the more I looked at it, the more I thought that there was so much going on with all the bright colorful fabrics, that simple quilting was the way to go and let the fabrics speak for themselves.  I'm really happy with my decision, and it has come together just as I had envisioned in my head.



When I started this quilt, I had all intentions of giving it as a gift for one of the many friends and family of ours who are expecting a baby in the near future, but I'm not sure I can give this one away.  I just love the sort of retro vibe the Granny squares block has, and paired with the bright vibrant modern fabrics just seems to be a perfect match.  Not that I think I am some master quilter or anything, but I'm not sure anyone I would give this to would appreciate it as much as I do.  I hope that doesn't sound terrible, most of the quilts I make are for gifts, and I understand that anything handmade is all a matter of taste, but for some reason, this is just screaming at me to keep it.  We don't have any children yet, but are hoping to start a family soon, so I think I'll tuck this quilt away for our hopefully one day baby.



I backed this with this super cute grey and white houndstooth print I picked up at Joann's a little while back, and I just love it.  That coupled with the aqua Timeless Treasures crosshatch sketch (another fav) for the binding, and the quilt rounds out to a solid 78 different stash fabrics used in this quilt.  I find it a little frightening that I hardly found it challenging to come up with this many different prints all from stash... addicted to fabric much?  I think so.

Granny and I will be linking up to Kati's Slash the Stash April linky party, be sure you head over to From the Blue Chair and add your April stash project!

Quilt Stats

Quilt Name:  Granny Squares baby quilt

Pattern:  Based on the Granny Square block tutorial by Jolene of Blue Elephant Stitches

Quilt Size:  45" square

Fabrics used:  78 different fabrics from my personal fabric stash, with Kona White solid

Binding:  Timeless Treasures Crosshatch Sketch in Aqua

Quilting:  Straight line quilting 1/4" on both sides of each seam done by me on my home machine