Little Boy Blue: The Quilt So Nice I Made It Twice

Little boy blue,

Come blow your horn,

The sheep's in the meadow,

The cow's in the corn.

But where is the boy

Who looks after the sheep?

He's under a haystack,

Fast asleep.

–Mother Goose

Early last fall I made a really fun scrappy quilt, Pinkalicious for my sister's sweet new baby girl. It was so much fun to make and I thought it would be just as much fun to make one in blue. It was.

When I found out a dear friend of mine, who had married in her mid-thirties and had struggled with infertility, was expecting her first baby, I knew that's the quilt I wanted to make for her. She was due in late November, but he was born about six weeks early, which makes this quilt three months late. About my usual, lately .

I've had the top finished since the beginning of November and have had so much going on I haven't had a minute to quilt it. Also, I was kind of dreading working with the Ultra-Cuddle {fuzzy on both sides and stretchy} on the back. Getting the back to work with the Pinkalicious quilt was an adventure/learning process and even though I knew what I wanted to do {fuse the layer of flannel that I used instead of batting directly to the Ultra-Cuddle to help stabilize it}, I still lacked the momentum {motivation/desire/time} to do it. You know how you put off a task that you anticipate being unpleasant, right? The Ultra-Cuddle combined with the satin blanket binding, which is an absolute pain to work with, made a combination I was not looking forward to. But I just can't resist putting that oh-so-soft-and-silky edge on baby blankets. The texture is especially nice with fleece or Minky or Ultra-Cuddle, so it really wasn't optional for this quilt.

The quilting was really fun to do, once I finished the stitch-in-the-ditch to stabilize the whole thing. I found an image of a star I liked, sized it to fit in the 4" squares and the 1" setting squares and printed them out. Marking is not my favorite thing, so used some glue that is like a sticky note when it dries on the back of my paper templates and stuck them to my quilt, but the points kept coming up and they shifted. Lane mentioned he was going to use freezer paper to do the same thing, and I thought that might work better than the sticky note glue, but he reported back that he had corners popping up too, that he didn't like it much, and probably wouldn't try it again, so I bagged the idea, traced the stars onto a light-weight cardboard {think cereal box}, cut them out and then traced them onto the quilt top with the old blue marking pen standby. Again. {Sidebar: I'm looking for new, less expensive way to mark quilts. The cost of marking pens is ridiculous, even with a 50% off coupon. I know that the Frixion gel pens are fairly inexpensive, but after reading this review, I don't think I'll use it to mark my quilts. I thought Geta's suggestion of the Bic Kid's Couleur Washable Markers was an interesting one. They are not sold in the US, but you can find them on eBay. I wonder if Crayola's Washable markers would work as well? Perhaps I'll experiment.}. After I did the stars, I did loops in the sashing. This quilt goes in the mail tomorrow to it's new little owner, who I hope will cuddle and drag and love this quilt until it falls apart.

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