It's finished! My very first ever official quilt:





with tag, of course:


It's baby sized at ~35" x 45" which as it turns out was a good place to start because it was relatively instant gratification and it definitely gave me a better idea of what I do and don't want to do for the bed size one I'm planning for our room.

I hope the mommie to be and her soon-to-arrive enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it!

Honestly, I'm a little ashamed of the quilting on it but hey, first quilt n'all, and now I know that circles are NOT the way to go for machine quilting on a standard machine unless it's something really small. Plus I wish I would have used white thread instead of the pale blue I used on the top, but again, now I know.
Good thing babies aren't picky.

I think I'll do at least one more throw sized project before starting on the big one just because I'm still not sure on what I want and I'm sure I don't need to tell you there are just way too many ideas to play around with.
One thing is certain...I do not possess a quilting brain. I think that goes hand in hand with having a math brain, and I am about as far from math brain as a person could get. As such, this whole project was very much from the hip with no particular plan and a couple of take apart and do overs thrown in just for kicks. I am ever so much a process person, so the idea of following a pattern and cutting out an entire quilts' worth of pieces and then sitting down to sew them up according to a plan just doesn't do it for me. Which is not to say I didn't try that for about a second, or long enough to cut out and piece one block of the "Love Beads" pattern from Modern Quilt Workshop. Love that particular quilt but just can't see enjoying making it much.

From there I moved on to the idea of a mostly crazy quilt top with some solid white thrown in. But did you know that crazy quilt piecing takes forever? Um, yes. So that idea went quickly by the wayside in exchange for mostly solid with some crazy pieced sections which is basically what I ended up with. In hindsight, I think I could have just cut the white strips in single, long sections instead of piecing them in the small random size rectangles you see and not lost much, but again, now I know.
So, I think it's safe to assume that, like this project and most everything else I do, any future quilts by my hand will have to evolve from my own (slightly psychotic and very messy) organic process.
Amen for a dedicated craft room.