Tal's Habitat of Love

So my friends Jackie and Ben (who both attended "library school" and worked with me) had a little baby boy at the end of November. His name is Tallis - Tal for short - and I finally got to meet him tonight! Knowing that he was coming along I started thinking about making a quilt to welcome him to the world; initially I started with working out a design (as I usually do) but that just was not working, so I jumped to thinking about fabric instead. Originally I thought that I would use "typical boy" colours and go with lots of blues and greens, maybe mixed with some grey, but then I decided to be a little more adventurous and settled on using pieces from Habitat by Jay McCarroll which had been sent to me by Free Spirit for the MQG challenge.

This is what I came up with! I went for a modified plus design that integrated various shades of grey - in this case Kona Charcoal, Coal, and Medium Grey - and also negative space. I could have made a standard plus quilt just using the Habitat fabrics, but I really wanted to do something different that was maybe more unexpected.

I took this little quilt (hmmm, forgot to measure it but I'd say it's about 42x47" or so) over tonight and I am so glad that Jackie and Ben liked it! Considering the fact that Ben mentioned awhile ago that his favourite quilt I've made was Sullivan's Steps, I was little worried that there might be too much pink (although I don't subscribe to the notion that boys can't have pink) or modern-ness for them, but it all worked out since they thought it was a-okay.

I used 100% unbleached, organic cotton for the batting, and quilted it with straight lines on the diagonal. The binding is also Kona Medium Grey. The backing is a solid piece of Kona Stone and I cut a label from the yard I had printed through Spoonflower to label it with.

This is one of the quilts that I mentioned in my last post was finished in November, so I am also super-glad that I finally got around to taking pictures of it before giving it away! Let me just say that working full-time during the winter means that it is dark when I leave for work and dark when I get home - not so good for picture taking! I'm hoping that in this new year I can be more organized with getting pictures done on the weekends, as long as the weather agrees with me that is!