Whirligigs and Ladybugs

One of my goals for the past week was to start and finish a baby quilt in time for a bris (Jewish ritual circumcision) this afternoon. I can check that one off the list. The quilt is done and delivered, and the new parents were quite pleased. It was lovely to hear their sweet thank you voicemail tonight.

Here's the binding. The quilt is mostly red, black, and white, with a large dose of yellow thrown in on the pieced back. I made the binding out of most of the black and white fabric I used in the quilt.

A whirligig, and probably my favorite of the black-and-white fabrics I selected for the quilt (I only had a fat quarter of it, so I had to use it sparingly).

Twelve whirligigs comprise the quilt front. Though it's impossible to see in the picture, the white is actually a white-on-white design and the black is a black-on-black design. In between there are shades of black-and-white prints. The baby's father's family is in the fabric business; as Ari once said to me "we moved from the schmatta [Yiddish for rags] to the garment to the fabric industry." As a result, I felt some pressure to not only come up with a good design but also to pick fabrics, ideally all purchased at independent retailers. If memory serves on all the prints, I accomplished that goal.

This is the first time I've pieced a back for a quilt (I first experimented with a pieced back on a table runner). At first I played around with the front black-and-white prints as well as the red. Then I decided it needed a splash of something new, and in came the ladybugs on yellow. I'm getting into the black, white, and yellow combination. I think it has a future with me.

Full view of the pieced back. I free-motion quilted it, with wavy lines moving all over. And I think I might like the back even better than the front. And that's ok, because it doesn't really matter which is technically the front and the back.

This is post #150, and in honor of it a giveaway will be coming your way sometime this week. Stay tuned.