Last Finished Quilt of 2011

I worked my butt off on the quilting and binding for this quilt and managed to finish it in time for Henry for Christmas. 

This quilt is the last of four I Spy quilts.
It is the last quilt for the year and the last of my parade of handmades.

(Henry's fishy square)

I started his I Spy quilt knowing two things, I wanted to use the Ann Kelle Remix Stripe somewhere in the quilt and that I was willing to cut into anything to get some interesting prints.

When I had finally pulled together the 135 prints for his quilt, it still took months and months before the full design came to me.  I'm not a fast designer.  Either the idea has come to me, or it hasn't arrived yet.  I try to be patient until the right plan comes to mind, but it isn't always easy.  The design for this quilt came over months of thinking about it.
One day, I just woke up and I knew I wanted to use more than color for the solid squares.  I thought that they would be random....

Then, weeks later, I decided to arrange the squares in a plus sign design.

 

Then, it took months before I figured out that I wanted the spy fabrics arranged by color
and in pluses also.

The quilt squares took up the whole floor of my dining room for two weeks before I figured out that the pale background spy prints had to go at the bottom of the quilt and offset by the colored solids.

Even once the top was designed, it still took me ages and ages before I knew how to quilt it.  Eventually, I decided on a mix of machine and hand quilting.

Here is the recipient inspecting the I Spy squares:

I think he likes it!

Thank you to Rachel, Audrey, and Sandi for helping me to collect fabrics!

And thank you to all readers and commenters on this blog.
It really does help me stay motivated to finish projects throughout the year.

Happy New Year to you!