The neighbors across the street have a little girl named Mina, who is just a few weeks older than Ada. They are expecting another little girl in October, and decided to host a Big Sister Party, to help her feel special, before her baby sister arrives. She is a bit shy, and afraid of animals beyond their house cat. As a family, they have been working on the concept of being brave, even when things are scary, and each night they talk about how they were each brave that day. They tell stories about how Mina was brave and tried new things. And her most recent brave achievement, was petting a goat at a local farm! Clearly this act of bravery should be honored with a farm themed quilt!
The fabric is an Alexander Henry print from Joann’s. I was loosely following a giant star baby quilt pattern, which called for layer cake squares, and looked more scrappy. Since Mina is a big girl now, I decided to try to make the quilt a bit bigger than a traditional baby-size. I cut my blocks 11.5", and planned to pair my squares so that the center of the star would be a pink diamond, with the farm print behind it. I carefully planned out each block, so all of the directional print would be going the same way. Sadly I got interrupted as I was drawing the line on the last one, which resulted in two blocks sewn (and therefore cut) wrong.
I had just enough fabric to cut a new block for the giant star, but didn’t want the fabric from the wrong blocks to go to waste. So I attempted a version of the 8 at a Time HST method to recut the big pieces, into smaller ones. With the last of the black dot fabric, I was able to turn all the new little HSTs into this center block. It wasn’t quite big enough to be the center of the quilt, so I added a thin border of pink to make it fit. I feel like this gave the quilt a more dynamic feel, with the giant star radiating out beyond the inner one, like a sunburst.
The borders are 2.5" and 4.5" respectively, and both fabrics came from Joann’s. To add to the bright, high-contrast feel, I quilted it in hot pink, so the thread would show up against the black polka dot. I repeated the black dot on the back of the quilt, and finally, I used more of the black & white stripe from my Scrappy Potato Chip Quilt binding, to bind this one too. (There are going to be so many quilts with this binding!)
It’s in the washer now, so I can gift it tomorrow. Hopefully it will be excellent fort-building material, and fitting on a toddler sized bed. I am trying to embroider a label for it today. Cross your fingers I get to that too…
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