Mollie's Baby Quilt

My coworker Mollie recently had a baby boy, Waylon.  When Mollie first told us she was having a boy, I asked if she had a theme planned for the nursery.  She told me that she planned on no theme, but if she had decided to do a theme, it would have been forest animals.

Well, I have a HUGE collection of 5" I Spy squares.  So I went through them and picked out anything that I thought might live in a forest.  Then I selected 40 based on biggest variety of animals and a somewhat limited list of colors to give it coherence.  I chose Kona Leprechaun as the background fabric because I thought the green was nice and bright and appropriately forest-y. 

Upper Left

The pattern is Galaxy by Villa Rosa Designs. I really like how quickly it comes together.

Upper Right

I used my best judgement on what qualified as a forest animal.  I didn't ask Mollie for any elaboration when she told me "forest animals" and I didn't tell her I was asking so I could make a quilt, though it's possible that she guessed. I did end up with a lot of repeated animals.  I had quilt a few owl and racoon fabrics.

Lower Left

I did straight line quilting on either side of the vertical seams.  I really like the grid it created.  I've only recently started trying Aurifil thread and my husband gave me a gift set for my birthday. One of the colors in that set matched the Leprechaun perfectly.  Except the thread broke constantly.  Now, I said I'm fairly new to using Aurifil but this wasn't my first time.  On my previous uses, the thread sewed like a dream.  I tried everything I could think of and the thread still broke.  I posted in a quilting forum on facebook asking for help--all the suggestions were things I'd already tried multiple times with no luck.  Someone tagged an Aurifil rep in the US and I had an email from her within half an hour.  She said I had tried everything she would have suggested, it must be a bad spool, and send her a photo of the top of the spool and she would send me a replacement. And within a week, I had a new spool (bigger than my original spool, mind you) plus two bonus spools and a product booklet that outlines all the different weights of Aurifil thread and their best uses.  New spool quilted like a dream and I was able to finish the quilting with far less frustration.  Now THAT is customer service!  I am so impressed!  Thank you, Aurifil!

Lower Right

Mollie and her husband referred to the baby as "Slug" during her pregnancy.  I have hundreds of 5" squares of I Spy fabrics but I was only able to find one slug.  At least, I hope it's a slug! 

I used a great print called Mama & Me for the back. I really love these bears!

I took the quilt to Mollie and Waylon a little over a week ago.  Both seem to like it, and I hope it gets lots of use and love over the years.

This was #4 on my list of Q2 goals for the Finish Along.  This is also my list of UFOs to complete for my PhD (Projects Half Done) with Gail of Quilting Gail.