Zane's cozy quilt

I told you I am trying to burn through these WIPs... Here's another one that's been half finished for a year or more. (Ugh!) it was a while ago when my friend, Ramona, gave me some of Robert Kaufman's modern cheater prints to play with. I loved them and sat there trying to figure out what to do with them... Here's how I know this was so long ago... I'd just started to drive down to Yolanda's house every week to sew with her as she had learned her cancer was serious. I noticed she had a couple of her own WIPs that were this easy pattern... A 5" square with a 5" border around it. Simple. But really pretty! So I decided to try that with this cheater print for a fast (haha!) baby quilt I could give away. But when I made the first four squares and laid them out, Z started saying, "I WANT THAT QUILT!" (What? Really?) "yeah! I love it!" ("Um, okay... I've never made you a bed sized quilt"... Remember this is last spring, before the Christmas quilts, which were also languishing in the WIP pile)
So I planned to make it bigger. But then it sat there for months while we moved houses, remodeled, and I dealt with all of Yolanda's unfinished projects and dreams. So Z's quilt was in a pile at the bottom of the box.
November last year was our retreat and I pulled this puppy out - all four squares of it and asked my friends, "how do I make this baby quilt into a bed sized quilt?" I had all sorts of border options - all of which were lame until we all pooled our resources and realized that I had enough of each of these fabrics to make an additional 8 squares for a proper repeat. I love generous friends!!! (I think Hollie and Ramona especially contributed to this one)... XOXOXO!
Thanks to the retreat and my pals, the top was completed before Thanksgiving.

This is Z we are making this for. The kid is so into how things feel. I realized he would love it regardless, (he's also very sensitive and sentimental) - but it would mean SO much more to him if it was super soft. Ahhhh. I bought some super nice gray dotted flannel for the backing and then I decided to hand quilt it so it would have all that yummy give.

I kept losing interest in quilting this quilt. The hand quilting was boring this time; repetitive and I did most of in white thread on white fabric (snore) ... At quiltcon, however, I picked up some awesome variegated yarn that had the exact match of colors - primaries plus aqua (what are the chances?) and that finally got me excited about finishing this quilt. I used that in the middle sections (which I forgot to mention, are 8" not 5") ... Finally got all the quilting done during this horrid flu I've had....
And the binding is something that Zane saw floating around my office the other day...it's an adorable postage-type stripe called "Handle with care" - also by Robert Kaufman.

The end result is something I am really happy with and I hope he loves it long enough to take it to college with him.