We love him dearly.
So what do you give a teenage boy? I bet a quilt was at the top of your list, right?
So all kidding aside, I really did want to make my brother a quilt and so I brainstormed a few ideas of what I could do. In August I started pulling fabrics: navy blues, royal blues, and greys. I continued to cultivate great "gender neutral" prints through out the process.
After struggling for a bit with the design, I decided I wanted to make a word quilt. All of the words would be about my brother and inside jokes. The entire quilt would be made out of words. Awesome! I grabbed From Blank Page's First Alphabet pattern (link to etsy store here) and brainstormed words.
Then in September I started to paper-piece all of the words...
Then around mid November, I panicked! Only 7 words done! (I blame all of nicknames that start with "R"). - Admittedly, it was my first time doing foundation paper piecing and if you look closely, you can probably spot where I started and where I finished :) It took me a while to get a hang of the tiny pieces. - With only 7 words done, I decided to scale back and do a combination of words and brick layout.
Words: Bubba, Brother, Ryno, Reynaldo, Ryguy, Hickman, Moatboat, Suppin It Up, and Ryan.
And here is the finished quilt, all hand-quilted:
