Quilt for New Grandson

At the time of the Houston Quilt Festival in October/November 2017 I knew I was going to have a new grandson come April 2018 and bought some fabric accordingly from a vendor called The Whole Country Kaboodle. The choices I made from the line titled To Be or Not to Be were a selection of houndstooth tone on tone mini-print fat quarters, a medium print with various critters on it, and a panel that had nine feature blocks of various animals. The animal print with words (center fabric in the photo) was so darn cute I planned to use it as a backing or as sashing between blocks.

On the panel is a banner under each animal with a goal virtue displayed: Be Curious, Be Brave, Be Humble, Be Wise, Be Generous, Be Gentle, Be Kind, Be Grateful, Be Thoughtful. It struck me as endearing advice for raising a baby. It wasn't until I was over halfway finished with the top before the Shakespeare phrase "To Be or Not To Be?" followed by "There Is No Question" on the panel borders made any sense to me. Of course, you should strive to possess all those virtues:  curiosity, bravery, humility, wisdom, generosity, gentleness, kindness, gratitude and thoughtfulness. What a great sentiment! But if it took me that long to realize the meaning, then it was too deep for a new baby or his sleep-starved parents to comprehend. I left the border out of my design but I did save it, of course for future use!

The colors of the houndstooth blenders were very rich and I was especially drawn to the concept of using houndstooth for a boy.

I was planning to reserve two houndstooth colors, the light teal and a black (not shown), since they echo the animal block frame so well.

At this point I did not have a pattern in mind but guessed I would separate out each animal block and alternated them with a different quilt block – perhaps an Ohio Star or log cabin made from the houndstooth. Once back home, I browsed through my patterns and decided on Framed Nine Patch by a local designer, James Hahn. I had been to a preview party hosted by my local quilt shop, In Between Stitches, and a sample had been made up in a set of masculine colors that really appealed. Doing the same thing in those houndstooths would look great, I thought! Perhaps I could scatter the animal blocks throughout this sea of framed nine patches.

So I merrily went about my way, pairing two houndstooth colors and making blocks. A pair of fat quarters yields four blocks, so I made sixteen blocks from eight of the houndstooth fat quarters I had. Each block measured 10.5" (five times 2.5" strips). These were the combinations I picked: orange and gold, red and brown, green and teal, and tan and rose. All those colors were in the animal blocks.

In my blog post for March 30th I'd put these blocks up on my design wall and found that they did not work at all with my critter blocks. Although I had originally planned to border the critter squares to make them larger, the scale of the central nine patches was all wrong and dominated those cute little animals. Plus with 16 nine-patch blocks and 9 animal blocks at 10" a block, a 5x5 twenty-five block quilt would have been huge for a baby, 50" x 50". Back to the drawing board... literally. I scanned an animal block and a 3x3 assortment of houndstoothes (houndsteeth?).

I duplicated the images and combined them in powerpoint trying different arrangements and spacing them to make room for sashing. I tried a random scattering of the animal blocks and could not make it work to my satisfaction so I went with an organized X configuration.

I then realized I did not have room for sashing and those framed nine-patches had a built in sashing anyway that I really wanted to keep. I decided to re-make the blocks using a 2.0" strips for a 1.5" finished square size that would make an 8.0" block (5x1.5"). This dimension was more in keeping with the scale of the 8.0" nearly square animal blocks. I could unstitch those sixteen blocks framed nine patch 10.5 " blocks and re-use the fabric to re-make the blocks with a smaller grid size. I really did not want to do all that ripping out – especially when I had sixteen perfect good blocks I could use on something else. I checked the website of the The Whole Country Kaboodle and did not find a stack of houndstooth fat quarters. I called them and they still had them, just not on the website. I explained my situation, bought another set with my credit card over the phone, and – they were so great – I had them is my hands two days later.

While I was waiting, I messed around making a few of the framed nine-patches in the smaller grid size. At the Connecting Threads booth at the Houston Quilt Festival (post for 11/9/2017) I had bought a selection of solids that were printed with a texture to replicate burlap (shown on the left). At the Road2CA show (post for 1/25/2018)  I'd attended in January, I had purchased a stack of polka dot grunge in lighter, brighter colorways (on the right). I pulled colors from my stash of these fat quarters as close to the coordinated houndstooth varieties as I had.

I had convinced myself that a boy's quilt should not have polka dots or pink. But I caved in that resolution. I paired a deep red burlap with a rose/coral grunge dot and loved that they enhanced the owl and mouse block more so than the rose and tan houndstooth they replaced. I think the tan was intended to pick up the coloration of the toadstool stem and the owl's breast but the dots I subbed in instead picked up the mouse's ears and the owl's cheeks. There were already polka dots on the toadstool cap so I felt vindicated that I could add my own. The big muted dots are somewhat subtle, too, I rationalized.

I was on a roll. I really did like the deep, deep brown burlap texture and found a swirly orange in my stash to pair with it. Those colors went with the fox and the hedgehog in a more juvenile way than the tan-ish brown and rust-ish orange of the more adult houndstooth.

Now I was halfway there. The green and the teal houndstooth now looked a bit too sedate with the other fabrics. I pulled a bright green mottled tone on tone and a bright aqua grunge to replace them respectively. The green and the teal had been the lowest contrast of the houndstooth pairings so instead of pairing the bright colors with each other, which I thought might be too glaring, I found two lighter fabrics to use. I used a white with a fine dotted green line and a pale aqua with subtle soft stripes. I like that the striping called attention to the background of the animal blocks.

By now my repeat purchase of houndstooth fat quarters had arrived but I was pleased with my recent experiments and decided to keep them. The houndstooth fat quarters I ordered more of will go into my stash and I will probably make more framed nine patch blocks in the 10.5" size to go with the sixteen I already have. I did however still want to use the houndstooth in this boy quilt. I pressed it into service as a light teal houndstooth border and a green houndstooth binding with black houndstooth accent piping. It reinforced the coloring of the block outlines and the podiums where the animals were. See? I did use three of the houndstooth fabrics after all!

 
Now I had the challenge of FMQ which I still approach with a bit of trepidation. I did continuous line quilting wherever the framed nine-patches were. I was considering doing it in the border, also, but decided I wanted the border to be different. I did a snaking motion alternating between horizontal and vertical. When I first completed it I did not care for it but was not about to unstitch it. Once I put the  binding on however, I liked the way the border receded and seemed to let the animal blocks shine  forward. I was glad I had dared to try something new. I was brave enough to use a contrasting thread color. The bright lime had sufficient contrast to show up, but was subtle enough to camouflage imperfections.

The final FMQing I did was the animal blocks themselves. I let the quilt sit and marinate a couple days while I was trying to decide. I considered a tight meander in the pale area so the background would recede and the animals pop. But my skill level at meandering is still pretty low and I thought negotiating the contours of the animals could be tricky. I decided to take advantage of the subtle striped background. I switched to white thread and used a ruler to go up and back on the white lines between the pale stripes, much as one would quilt a piano key border. I detoured around the twigs, leaves, and bumblebees but decided to compromise and go through the laurel wreaths to make my job a bit easier.

I'd used an aqua thread in the bobbin to blend in with the backing fabric and a snippet of the blue is peeking through under the deer's chin. For the most part though my tension balance was pretty good since neither the white appeared as dots on the back nor did the aqua thread appear as dots on the front. Here is the completed quilt. The border does recede a bit and the animals do pop out some, so I am on the right track for my FMQ reasoning and selections.

The back of the quilt  has the animal print as the backing. Can you tell which are the animal blocks and which are the framed nine patch?

I affixed my trademark grosgrain ribbon labels in the two lower corners with my initials and the date on one and the quilt name on the other. I had to ponder a bit to come up with a quilt name that pleased me. Then it just popped into my head. All that advice on the front about how to act was noble enough that I just wanted to add a Grandmas's wish, Be Happy.

And speaking of happy, my son and daughter-in-law certainly were. Here is my son, Dan, holding his 8 lb 9 oz son, William Daniel, just hours after he was born.

William's two older sisters were quite entranced also when they met him a couple days later.

Sleep well, William.

I refrained from revealing this quilt in my blog until I had given it away. We just got back late last night from visiting and meeting our newest grandson, and gifting quilt. Now I feel free to publish this post and link up with Let’s Bee Social #226. William is 11 days old in the following photo.