Quilt Story: Needle and nest cute quilt finish...

Michelle submitted this super sweet little star quilt, it has the sweetest little fuzzy cut prints. Love it! Want it! Michelle has a great lifestyle/sewing blog. She is expecting a little baby, congrats! She has a cute etsy shop, and Michelle just won first place in a contest for her pin cushion! Yeah! Be sure to check out her blog, needle and nest...

It's been nearly four months since I finished this beautiful baby quilt for my dear friend. I had originally planned to give it to her at her baby shower back in February, but Master W. got sick and I had to stay home.

I spent a day or so debating with myself as to whether or not I should wait and hand deliver it or simply drop it in the mail (she lives two hours away so we don't see each other often). In the end, the quilt was just too special for anything but a personal delivery, so it sat wrapped and waiting until the baby was born and we could arrange a day to visit.

Flash forward to this past weekend when hubby and I were finally able to meet the sweet and super adorable Miss I. for the first time... and deliver her quilt in person!

I'm so pleased that my friend and her husband loved the quilt.

My friend S. has a great love for rabbits, so when I was dreaming about making her baby's quilt I knew I had to somehow include a rabbit print. After hours of searching online fabric stores for inspiration, I finally stumbled upon Sarah Jane's Dolls print for the Children At Play collection. Not only did I fall in love with the sweet scenes of little girls playing with their dolls, but there was a little rabbit popping up in one of the doll prams!

That single image sparked my imagination and led to the design of the quilt you (finally!) see here. I decided to do sawtooth stars (a first for me) with fussy cut centers containing images that reminded me of childhood. If you look carefully at the stars, you'll find cuts from:

All the of the star points were made using coordinating prints I picked up at JoAnn, with one or two prints pulled from my scraps. I pieced the back using up all of the leftover strips of fabric, along with a few other prints I picked up for the project (Balloon for Children at Play and Tortoises for Little Apples). The binding is some leftover pink polka dot fabric that I happened to have sitting in my stash at the time.

Many thanks to the super sweet Jennifer at Ellison Lane Quilts who helped me out with some great advice during this project. If you haven't been to her blog before, be sure to stop on by. She is awesomely talented!

This is by far my favorite quilt, and it's the one that brings me the most pride... so much so, that I've entered it into this year's Blogger's Quilt Festival over at Amy's Creative Side.