A Birthday Quilt

I recently decided that I missed my calling as a quilt maker. So far, I have only made 2 baby quilts, but the process was so fun! I got to pick lots of fun fabrics and figure out the best way to put them together, it was kinda like working a puzzle. And I do love a good puzzle.

So I decided to expand my quilting horizons a bit and make a queen-sized quilt for my cousin Hannah. Her 8th birthday was June 25th, and since I came up with this idea around the beginning of June, I figured that I had plenty of time. I did finish it on time (hooray!), and it was pretty nice to be able to work on it slowly and not be under a time crunch. 

I googled quilt patterns until I found one that looked cool, but wasn't too complicated (and that had good instructions with it). The pattern I found called for 6 different fabrics cut into 6 inch squares. Then, once they were all cut, I assigned each fabric a number so I could follow the pattern easily. 

Here's the pattern I used:

6	1	2	3	4	5	6	5	4	3	2	1	6
1	2	3	4	5	6	1	6	5	4	3	2	1
2	3	4	5	6	1	2	1	6	5	4	3	2
3	4	5	6	1	2	3	2	1	6	5	4	3
4	5	6	1	2	3	4	3	2	1	6	5	4
5	6	1	2	3	4	5	4	3	2	1	6	5
6	1	2	3	4	5	6	5	4	3	2	1	6
5	6	1	2	3	4	5	4	3	2	1	6	5
4	5	6	1	2	3	4	3	2	1	6	5	4
3	4	5	6	1	2	3	2	1	6	5	4	3
2	3	4	5	6	1	2	1	6	5	4	3	2
1	2	3	4	5	6	1	6	5	4	3	2	1
6	1	2	3	4	5	6	5	4	3	2	1	6

And here's all 6 of my fabrics all cut out. Picking out the fabric was probably the hardest part of this project because there are just sooo many fun fabrics out there! I just want to pick everything!

So once I had sewn all the squares into strips, then the strips all together, here's what it looked like:

Pretty awesome! But the problem was that it wasn't quite big enough. It would cover the top of a queen sized bed, but there wasn't enough to hang over the edges to really cover the bed. She has a full-sized bed, but just in case she ever upgrades, I wanted to make sure it would be big enough. So I ended up adding a small transitional fabric around the outside then about 7 inches of another really neat fabric to finish it off. Michael had the idea of adding the transitional fabric, and it really made the quilt look so much better. 

When I was doing the actual quilting, I just sewed diagonal lines across the squares, and I think it turned out really cool. Oh and I used a hot pink zebra fabric for the backing, because what 8 year old doesn't love a good zebra print?! 

Here's the finished product:

back of the quilt

close up of the quilting lines

I am really really happy with how it turned out! We went to Dallas the weekend following her birthday, so I gave it to her then and was able to see it in her room. Here's a picture of it on her bed, it matched her room perfectly! :)