What's in a Name: Finished Quilt

Each year we rotate names for our Christmas gift exchange.  This last year I got my teenage brother who is a goofy, sweet ham. 

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: