Forest Quilt Progress

Slight change to the plan for the forest quilt: I'm going to make a lovey first, with a coordinating quilt to come later. The lovey will be roughly a 24" square, with 2 of the four-part blocks and two bigger, cream blocks. My original intent for the quilt project was for it to be something that my son could snuggle. I realized a twin-size bed quilt probably would not meet that intent. So lovey first, and hopefully a similar bed quilt will aid in the transition to a big boy bed when he is ready for that.

The progress on the lovey is actually coming along pretty well, as small as it is. I have finished the four-part blocks. Yay!

The rest of the fabrics for the top layer are washed and ready to be cut. Sewing together the blocks and strips to finish the top will go incredibly quickly, and I'm hoping to get some time to get that done this weekend.

I also got a chance to play around with some mistake bits, trying to figure out what I want to do with the quilting. My only experience with machine quilting to date was straight lines on a shopping cart cover for G. So I have a lot of learning to do in that department. I played around with the leaf fabric with a contrast thread for visibility. I tried tracing the design, and just some general filler-type motifs that I've seen on other quilts. I wasn't impressed with any of these. On the corduroy, I knew I wanted to stay away from quilting across the plush lines of the corduroy, so tried vertical stripes and loved them. My current thought is to do (evenly-spaced) vertical stripes on the corduroy and horizontal stripes on the leaf fabric.

For the large cream blocks, I had the idea from the very beginning to quilt in some woodsy animals and/or motifs. I came across Lone Minkkinen's Quilting Designs from Nature in the recent American Quilter's Society catalog and was intrigued. I picked up a copy on Amazon (for less than the AQS member price) and am very excited about the designs it offers.

Now I just need to get some time when I am not exhausted and maybe I can start to make some more progress!