Lilly's Birthday Quilt

I have wanted to blog about this project for a couple of months now but had to wait until after I gave the quilt to Lilly. I wanted to make an I Spy quilt for her second birthday so that it would help Lilly learn new objects as well as colors. I had all of my charm blocks cut out to the appropriate size when Andrew came home and said "I have an idea". He really liked the Bug Jar quilt we had made Myka last year and thought it would be fun to make this quilt into a bug jar as well. So,I was determined that I wasn't going to recut out 70 blocks into a different size and if we were going to make this modification it would take a little magic formula to make it work. Andrew went to work with his engineering mind and in just a little while had figured out the pattern dimensions that we needed to modify it.
The next thing was how to do the back. I had found this really cool "Very Hungry Caterpillar" fabric panel that I wanted to use but it wasn't going to be big enough to cover the entire back. So, again Andrew went to the drawing board and it took a wee bit longer but he came out with a formula to incorporate the color panels from the top with the caterpillar panel to make a back big enough for what we needed.



I have a friend in Kuwait whose parents were visiting from Little Rock about the time I finished the top. I didn't have time to get it quilted before I had to leave my sewing machine behind so I sent it on to my friend Kyra in Round Rock to be quilted then to Mother for the hand binding. We got the top boxed up and sent it back with the visitors who mailed it to Texas for finishing. I couldn't have pulled this one off without this wonderful resource of helpers. Thank you.

I had so much fun making this quilt it just made me giggle everytime I finished a square! :) And now I know why....it must be a very happy quilt!