Evolution of a quilt ...

As I start a new quilt (for my Erin's newborn son, Caleb), I'm attempting to document the story of how that quilt was created. I started thinking about this quilt in October when we found out that Erin was having a boy (scrap the purple quilt I was thinking about and start over!). Erin picked out a theme for Caleb's room, and I started looking for fabric and thinking about a design. (This part took a while because I was also working on Evan's and Piper's quilts.)

After the thinking, and the fabric shopping (which really can go on forever, even if I'm not in the middle of three other things ...) and washing all the fabric, I decide on a pattern and do the math to figure the number and size of the blocks. In this case, I decided to do a patchwork of 2 1/2" squares, with a single, wide border. (For a crib-size quilt, that's 300+ squares.)

After checking the math, I start measuring and cutting.

Then I lay it all out and rearrange until I'm happy enough ...
and then the sewing starts. All these steps in reality are mixed up - going back and forth as necessary. Sewing is actually a process of pinning, sewing, ironing and then doing it all again. My iron is downstairs and my sewing machine is upstairs, so it's a good workout! There is a lot of sewing - smaller seams to start, and then longer seams as the block groups get bigger.