quilt top

We decided on a nautical theme for our nursery, and Marty suggested I make a quilt for it.  I started by looking through my  quilting books, but I didn't find anything I really liked.  I then turned to the internet, where I found this quilt for sale on etsy.com. We agreed, that it was the favorite of all the designs we'd seen.  But I didn't want to buy it; I wanted to copy it.  So I spent some time looking at it and the proportions and sketched it up, and started calculating fabric requirements.  A few days later I found the pattern for sale online (it's called "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" and made with Dear Stella's "Anchors Away" fabric collection).  For a few seconds I considered getting the pattern, but why?  I'd already done the hard part.

We decided to use some of the Dear Stella fabrics (which I found for sale online), but then the rest I already had in my stash.  One of the major changes we made was to use reds instead of oranges and then yellow for the suns.  I think I also deviated from how the pattern would have had me do it--In sketching it out, I identified nine 12x12in blocks with sashing between them.  But when it came time to actually cut and sew the white fabrics, I decided that working with panels rather than squares would be less cutting and piecing of the white--there were the panels of sails, masts, boats, and then water.  It worked really well this way.

I finished up the quilt top this past weekend--it was time to clean up the sewing room and turn it back into a guest room.

Now to find someone to help with the quilting....and hopefully before the baby's born.