My Whirlygiggle Gift

I made this quilt for a good friend's new baby boy - another baby quilt! :)  I love this pattern and was excited to make something for someone using it...

I used the Whirlygiggle tutorial from Crazy Mom Quilts, except I didn't follow it completely.  I used a charm pack, so I ended up with smaller blocks.  And, I didn't create a template.  I just cut the charm square from 2" from the top on one side, to the other side at 2" from the bottom.  I had a lot of squaring up at the end, but it worked easily.

I bought some charm packs for Love U by Deb Strain from Moda a while back when I found out I was having a new baby boy.  Because each of the charm packs had both the boy blue and green fabric and girl pink fabric included, I picked out the "boyish" squares from 2 different charm packs.  I needed 2 identical squares to form each pinwheel block.

 

I was originally planning to do a solid white border to make the green inner border pop, but I didn't like it at all.  Just ended up looking blah - nothing exciting.  Here is a photo of that idea...(but, so glad I changed my mind!)

Instead, I decided to do a scrappy border with the leftovers.  It added so much more color and fun to the quilt.  Here's a close-up...

I love the owls and snails....very cute for a little one!  I used a flannel polka dot from the same collection for the backing to make it more cuddly.  I quilted it myself using a "kind of zig-zag" pattern, which you can see a little bit here.

It was so hard to give away...pretty selfish huh?  I really liked the way it turned out, but I know it will be very well loved, which is what I want.  

I used basting spray for the first time on this quilt too.  It made the process so much quicker - and, I avoided those annoying safety pins by doing it that way.  However, it was very sticky, and kind of frustrating because everything kept sticking to each other.  There is probably a better method of doing it that I haven't figured out yet though! :)

Circles

Another baby quilt for my son.....

I found some similar quilts on various blogs and Flickr, and decided to make one for my son.  I loved the circles, and found this Drunkards Path Block Tutorial by the Sometimes Crafter.  I also got inspiration from this Raw Edge Circle Quilt Tutorial by Cluck Cluck Sew, although I decided against the raw edges (even though I think they are really cute too).

 The finished quilt measures approximately 40" by 50."  I squared each smaller block up to 5.5" when making the quilt - which means that each bigger circle square was 10" finished.

I used red, blue, and brown fabric from the All Star collection by My Mind's Eye from Riley Blake Designs, which I actually won from a local quilt store.  I also used additional pieces that I had on hand.  The brown polka dot backing is flannel, and the top is cotton.  After washing, it shrunk up quite a bit because of the flannel on the back.

These photos were taken in my parents backyard.  The weather is starting to get beautiful - can't wait for Spring!!!  He is enjoying being outside as well - as you can see! :)