A Quilt for Baby Rose

 Another nephew and his beloved bride decided to have a baby this year.  They are doing it the old-fashioned way and are waiting for the doctor to tell them if the baby has a port or a dongle after the little squab has been delivered.  Those crazy kids.

I had my eye on the fabrics in this quilt right about the time that I had time to work on a new quilt.  I have also been aching to produce a quilt using Joe Cunningham's "Rock the Block - Album Style" approach.  Joe doesn't really teach a pattern as much as he teaches a concept of artistic discovery.  He has a class on Craftsy.  It's actually a class that presents four different variations on a general approach.  It's a very good value if you are into quilting and want to expand beyond just following someone else's pattern.

I used a bit of this general technique on the quilt that I made for young Lincoln earlier this year.  But now I've had a chance to use Joe's approach on a complete quilt.

The fabrics come from a series by Wilmington Essentials called Gems Bubble Up.  If you look close, you can see the bubbles.  They're everywhere!

I did try to do a little free-hand quilting.  It didn't turn out very nice.  So I went back to the old standby...straight lines!

I learned a couple things this time around.  One is to be careful about using too many narrow strips.  If you buy the class, you'll know what I'm talking about.  There is such a thing as too many narrow strips just as there is such a thing as too many wide strips.

I also learned to mix it up a bit.  I made a bunch of sections with narrower strips and a bunch of sections with somewhat wider strips.  Then when it came time to put things together, I tried to put the two sections together to generate some unusual patterns.

Lastly, make lots of extra pieces. I thought I had way too much fabric.  It turns out I barely had enough.  I was hoping to have some extras so that I could play around with the pieces when it came time to put them together.  Not having a stack of spares restricted my results.

My next quilt will probably use some of the techniques that I used in this quilt.  I found an image.  I have a plan.  Y'all will have to wait and see!