Quilt Project

The nurse practitioner from my work had a baby at the end of May. She and her husband decided to wait until the baby was born to learn the sex, so all of us at work decided to have a shower for her after the baby came. That way we could give personalized gifts. She ended up having a little girl, so I traipsed to the fabric store to pick out some girly prints for a quilt. I finished it in less than a week, which only required a couple of days where I completely abandoned my children. My mom came by the day of the shower when I was trying to scramble to finish the binding because a) I'm a procrastinator and b) a couple of days before the baby shower the hostess moved the time of the shower to about three hours earlier in the day. I was on a tight schedule as it was and I didn't quite finish, but it all worked out. I took it to her later and she absolutely loved it. Here are the pics of my project.
I originally had something more elaborate in mind, but as I got closer to the deadline and life kept getting in the way, I decided to do a simple 45x60 crib size quilt with 4"squares. I designed the quilt on my computer and color coded it for the fabrics
Then I strip pieced the squares together. I made a little puzzle for myself and labeled each different set of pieced blocks. Then I pieced them together using the labels I'd made "A-G-F-B-C" etc. All of the patterns repeated, so it was pretty easy to piece after I'd mapped it out. I double checked everything as I went then I went and then ironed the rows and lined them all up to make sure they still matched the original design. So far so good.
Then I sewed all of the rows together and pressed the finished top. I pinned the top, batting, and backing to the quilt frame that Derek built for Jenni years ago. (I inherited it when they moved to Florida years ago.) Then I tied the quilt together at the corners where each square met, 4 inches apart, with brown embroidery floss.
The finished quilt.