Play Time!

Here is the baby quilt for our little one on the way! This is what I wanted to play with on my weekend of solitude, but had to wait until the Stars quilt was finished. The pattern is entirely out of the imaginings of my fevered brain. That also means that there was no pattern to work with, so it has taken a bit longer to finish than I had anticipated. Due to the children being around while I've created, I have had to get peanut butter and chocolate pudding washed out of it already.

I tried to come up with something that was particularly "boy-ish". After searching through all of my patterns, and everything under "baby boy quilt" online, it seems like the most boy-ish quilt available out there was either a blue & white pattern, or involved a bear, or Noah's Arc. That doesn't seem right. Or very realistic. So, I put my own brain on "search", and thought about what it is that a boy does that I thought would be great in a quilt. Kites would be fun, or balloons with fun fabrics - just SOMETHING that says boy, and not "Little Lord Fauntleroy" sissy-ish style. Then, watching my kids, it hit me. I realized that they both seem to love to get in the laundry basket - whether or not there is clean laundry in there, and just hang out there. So this idea was born.

As with any other project, it has gone through a number of incarnations. I have yet to add a hair swirl (the first one I did, ummmm, REALLY didn't work out), and some clothes pins - but my iron broke today - of course!

Matthew helped add some of the elements to make it look more realistic. He drew the hands on the edge of the laundry basket (hour long project), and the clothes pins (two hour long project)as well as helping with some of his other suggestions. It is really handy to have an artist's son in the house, and due to his inability to recognize my interpretation of certain things, they've had to be redone. Here are some snippets of our conversations:

"What are those big brown things right there?"
-You serious? Those are posts for the clothes line.
"They're a little thick, maybe some grass at the bottom would help it look better - or at least give you the idea that they're in the grass, and not just sitting on top there."
-Okay. (Ding! We've just added a two hour project to the quilt.)

"Why is the baby's mouth open?"
-It's not OPEN, can't you tell that its a pacifier?! Kids don't have purple mouths!
"Oh, maybe if you made a little handle thingie, it would look more like a pacifier."
-Oh, yah, well okay. (Ding! hour long project.)

"What is the baby sitting in?"
-THAT IS A LAUNDRY BASKET! Anyone can SEE it's a laundry basket! It's the spittin' gosh-darn image of a laundry basket, with laundry coming out of it. It has the SHAPE of a laundry basket, I made the pattern FROM a laundry basket! Can't you tell! (I refused to add another dang project at this point.)
"Oh, really? Well, okay."

And so, just in case you can't tell, those brown things with the string is a clothes line, and the white "thingie" on the line is a cloth diaper drying on the line. Or as Matthew guessed, "a white, baby, . . . something???"

It'll be fun to see what my quilter does with this one, and I believe that this baby will be the first of my babies to have a quilt done - by me, before s/he showed up. But, after two kids, I've also gotten smart enough to understand that it's harder to get one done after they come than before. So, TA DAH! Two quilts in about a week. Not bad, not bad.