Here, Fishy Fishy!

My college roommate, Vanessa, is now a marine biologist.  When we roomed together, she would sometimes squirt me with a plastic fish when I entered our room.  When Munchkin was born, Vanessa sent him an amazing mobile with fish that she knitted.  When I found out Vanessa was expecting, I knew that the baby quilt had to be fish.  Baby Spencer arrived last month and I am finally ready to send this his way.

I was inspired by this quilt by Cathy from Sane, Crazy, Crumby Quilting.  She used her leftover "crumbs" to make blue fish.  I knew I wanted my fish to be all colors.  I've been saving leftover pieces of my I Spy fabrics for a while.  I color sorted them and then just went to town!  I had a really good time with this quilt.  There are 3 or 4 fish made from bigger pieces, but almost all of the 30 fish are using up scraps. Specifically, I Spy scraps.  The very best kind!

The background fabric is Kona Pepper.  I quilted it using a blue variegated thread by King Tut that I already had.  I really like the wavy lines as quilting, and while I don't usually like my quilting enough to intentionally make it visible, I like it in this quilt. 

The back is a fabric I bought in Alaska on my honeymoon.  I have 3 different 1-yard cuts of fabrics by Sue Coccia, all from the Animal Spirits line.  I love them but hadn't used any since buying them 4 years ago, and this ocean-themed print seemed perfect for this quilt.  I did have to use a few bits of solid green & blue to make it large enough, but I didn't get a good picture of the entire back.

At one point while I was working on the binding I held the quilt up for my son (not quite 3 years old) and asked him what it looked like.  I was hoping for him to validate that these were clearly fish.  Instead, he started shouting out the things he could see.  "Tiger!  Monkey!  Banana!  More Monkey!"  I'm calling that success!  After all, what good is an I Spy quilt if you don't play I Spy?

Finishing this quilt was my One Monthly Goal for August in the OMG linkup hosted by Heidi of Red Letter Quilts (goal setter #35).  This quilt was also on my list of Q3 goals for the globally hosted Finish Along.  I will also eventually be linking up with Cynthia's Oh Scrap! and She Can Quilt's Scraptastic Tuesday.

This is seriously one of my favorite scrap quilts I have ever made.  I hope Vanessa & Spencer love it!