Thinking Smaller

I almost always make bigger bed sized quilts. After using all those 1.5" strips on my courthouse steps... I thought - small strips and smaller sized quilts are a nice mix. And I got to work on this cute little baby quilt. The funny thing is that my son thinks his Momma has gone plum crazy because don't I know - I don't have a baby and this is too small for him to fit under!

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I didn't have a pattern - didn't even really know what I was shooting for. First I made up 2 matching blocks, each 4 1/2". Then I sliced them in half and sewed them back together. Remember my very own comments about not using all small strips, I made a square in a square of the pieced blocks (they are 7 1/2") and then surrounded them by that fun green fabric. If you like to set your quilts on point - the formula for what size to cut the setting triangles can be found on Bonnie's website at www.quiltville.com . I have orange for the inner border and hopefully just enough of a 2nd fabric for the other border - I am almost certain I have enough... we will see!

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Usually I like to make controlled scrappy quilts. I like to think out my colors/tones ahead of time in terms of either summer, fall, winter, spring colors. So - this is a "spring" quilt. The bright green of new grass, the bright colors of flower bulbs... I didn't use any purple or pink (although the border fabric does have purple). I tried to keep my colors limited because I knew that this would be a small quilt and sometimes fewer colors play nicer together on a small surface. I picked just yellow, green, orange and blue for the blocks and they had to be bright tones - so no "fall" colored hues made the cut.

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Here is a mini collage of some of the fabrics, close up.