Completed March 27, 2003
36" x 43"
This quilt was made for Kylie Jordan, the first born of one of my best friends. Valerie had chosen the "Blue Jean Teddy" infant line to decorate her nursery. I found a bolt of fabric that had a pattern for a fabric book printed on it. Instead of constructing the book, I use five of the pages as blocks. However, they were 8"x10", which is an odd size to work with instead of squares. I designed a quilt with blocks of various sizes and double 1-inch square patchwork strips as filler sashing.

Then I had to shop for fabric. I had already purchased a coordinating fabric that had the bears and a small pictures of the toys on it. I wanted to find a variety of fabrics in the colors that were printed in the patchwork border around the blocks from the book. While searching I found beautiful fabric that looked like a mini quilt of nine-patches alternating with solid denim-colored squares. The colors were perfect and I knew it would save me a lot of time instead of my original double 1-inch square patchwork strips. However, each of the squares on this fabric was about 1.5-inches--too narrow for one strip and too wide for two.
But I couldn't pass it up, so I went back to my computer. The dimensions for each block had to be a multiple of 1.5, so I cropped the pages down to 7.5"x9", Dropped a couple of blocks and rearranged. This is what I ended up with. The white blocks represent either the pages or strips of the quilt-like fabric.

I chose the "Ohio Star" block because Valerie is from Ohio. I used it in the four corners and placed a teddy bear in the center. I chose "Friendship Star" for its name and because it is one of my favorite blocks. Carlin created large balloon-like letters for me to applique on the words "BEAR" and "TOYS" instead of piecing the blocks I had found in EQ5. I alternated them with "Diamond in the Square" blocks featuring small images of the toys in the center. I added in little "Windmill" blocks to fill space. Then I got to work!

Valerie was due at the beginning of Spring Break, but I had planned on using Spring Break to work on this quilt. I sewed like crazy and got it done, binding and all, by Thursday night. Valerie asked me several times that week what I was up to, and it was hard to come up with things to tell her without giving away my secret! Kylie arrived two weeks late, so I kept my secret longer than expected because I wanted to give the quilt to Valerie at the hospital. She was surprised and please with the quilt.
When Kylie was a baby, it hung on her bedroom wall. Now it is her blanket of choice on her toddler bed.
I love this picture of Kylie admiring her quilt.