Luke's Planets

I'm nearly finished with the quilting on Owen's, so I've been taking inventory of what I still need to cut for Luke's quilt.  I had run out of a few colors when I was initially cutting.  Turns out my new yellow and green don't match what I already had.  The yellow I think I can pass off in the quilt as long as it's not caddy corner to an original yellow.  The green though, not so much.  Seeing as I was planning on backing Luke's in green anyway, this isn't really too terrible a happening, I had to buy more green anyway.  Luke's green won't be quite the same as Owen's green, but the bunk beds should take care of anyone noticing.
The only down side is that now I have to cut all new green squares and rectangles as I can't use the ones already set aside for Luke.  I suppose my eventual dollhouse quilt just planted a garden.

Finally, Some Pictures

Here it is. The finished product.  And of course, the ever present three year old model. 
I've known this sister-in-law now for going on eight years and I've seen some of her fabric choices and how she's decorated.  I have a theory that people have fabric personalities whether they know it or not.  So with that theory I tried to go with a geometric, clean, graphic look that can sometimes be bold.  It was about that scientific.  Although I did use graph paper when I was planning this one, so maybe it was a little scientific. 
I did robots and a bunch of checkerboard bits.  Deconstructed checkerboard is the glorified name I've given it, but really it's just overlapping checkerboard bits. 

 As you can see it is exactly one three year old long.  Here are close-ups of the robots.  Turns out it was kinda tricky coming up with the robots.  There's the classic robot, but then what?  The girl actually designed the third one.

 This is the girl's robot.  She chose his shape and I tricked him out.  His numbers can be made into B2's birthday.  The loops on the 8's are each sewn individually so that his mom can snip out the extras and make it B2 specific. 

 I put a bunch of nuts and gears on the blanket, robot parts of course.

 And wrenches.  I love the wrenches.  I made them with an extra layer of super fluffy batting so they have tons of poof.  I love me some poof.  Then I appliqued my little wrench quilts onto my quilt top.

 I did the same for the big gears and the number pad square has extra batting too.  It's for imputing things with your robot.  I don't have a robot so I don't know what kind of things you would input, maybe how many scoops of ice cream to bring you. 

 And then there's the binary.  Sigh.  I used geeky translators to get their last name into binary and used some of my fancy smanchy embroidery floss to really carefully put it in all equidistant.  Doesn't it look great?  What's that? You can't actually see it?  Yeah, shouldn't have use yellow.  Curse you farsighted eyes.  I promise if you were holding it a foot from your face you would be able to see it perfectly.  Next time, no yellow on a patterned fabric.  But trust me, it looks good.  And really, B2 will have a pretty close view, so he can back me up on the actual beauty of the binary.

 Here it is sans child measuring stick.  As a whole I think it works.  That's not to say that it doesn't have a lot going on, but I think it's a good kind of lot.

 See the poof.  My future quilter wanted to pick it up.

 The quilt method on this one was to quilt outside the squares.  I thought it might connect some of the checkerboard a bit more and it would work with the lattice-esque fabric of B2's drapes.  Since it's the opposite of my vanity quilting I'm calling it my modesty quilting.  I have a dorky love for words. 

 I used three different yellow patterns and as orange patterns were all too girly for my taste I used a solid orange.  The solid turned out being a nice balance to the patterns.   I used two blues.  The main blue for my blank squares, and a secondary blue dot for the background of the robots and the occasional little blank square in some of the smaller checkerboards.

 Here's the view once B2 starts holding his head up.

There are a few things I would do differently and a couple squares I wouldn't include again, but I had fun on this one.  I love the wrenches so much that someday I might just make some crazy quilt with tools everywhere. 

Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down?

I finished the quilting during a marathon nap.  And good thing, too; B2 will be arriving in the next couple/ few weeks. 
Lily, being the only other person home and awake, was the first to see it.  She was at a loss for words, which seeing as she's been talking nonstop since about thirteen months, is saying something. Eventually she got out that "it's a little crazy."  I then tried the standby of thumbs up or thumbs down.  Even that took some time, but did garner a thumbs up.
All I have left is binding and a few more details, then its off to California.  Then I will post pictures and see who else we can leave dumbfounded.

Ready To Quilt

Lily and I finished the quilt top (and unspooled my ribbon stash) today. It's now basted and waiting for some quilting.
It still may be a bit busy, but I like to think of it more as... not sure what, but a good kind of busy. Mentally stimulating maybe. I'm excited to see it finished.

Oh, It's More Than Hope

It's all coming together now.  I really should learn not to doubt myself in the process.  I think it's gonna be awesome, one might even say it will totally rock.  I am looking forward to the actual quilting; I have a new method I want to try that I think will really tie it all together.  If I love it as much as I am beginning to think I likely will, Jenna's might just find she has one in her house someday too. 
I really, really wanna show some pictures, but alas, I love the element of surprise with gifting.  So we all have to wait until B2's momma has it in hand.  Then there will be more than enough pics to make up for the current lack.

There's Hope

I've been slowly adding what I'm calling "the elements" of the quilt. It is looking good. I still think it might tend toward chaos, but I'm shooting for organized chaos.

Decisions, Decisions

After having been away from the infamous quilt and now seeing it again, we are torn.  Nathan says I should just go with it.  He thinks it goes with the fabrics B2's mom has in his room.  It's still maybe kinda busy, but if I make it and am still undecided I figure I'll just email a pic around and get third and fourth and fifth opinions.  I can always scavenge it into a quilt with less going on.  I am excited about all the individual elements, but as is my usual, I'm doubting the unseen final product.  So for now we are back to Plan A.  Again.