Sing, Sing, What Shall I Sing?

First block of Milo's nursery quilt

I have four kids and I’ve made a baby quilt for each of them.  Since it's impossible to know the baby ahead of time, the quilts really just reflect where I am while pregnant with each one.  The first three were fairly straight forward; a kaleidoscope quilt for my first, a HST quilt for my second, a froggy appliqué quilt for my third, but for my fourth?  I had some trouble with that one.  I had an idea to make a quilt using nursery rhymes and games that I have loved singing with my other kids.  My first thought was to make the quilt using only Mother Goose Rhymes, but they aren’t as child friendly as you’d think.  And when I referred to my annotated version to further investigate the ones I liked, I didn't like their meanings.  So I decided to broaden the scope.  We sing tons of songs; in fact, sometimes we make up songs to entertain ourselves.  Last week on our walk home from school with my boys we made up songs for sidewalks, trees (specifically climbing), lions who like to roar a lot, and roads.  It’s always been an important part of our day.  

Anyway, after some reflection, I settled on a nature theme.   All children love animals, and we have especially enjoyed a singing/storytime at our local botanical garden where we have even learned some new songs.  Clearly, there is plenty of material, so I had to decide which songs would translate to a block, and come up with some drawings that I could appliqué and embroider.  I love this idea.  I even made a few blocks that I really like.  But they weren’t coming together for me as a completed quilt.  Eventually, I realized that I wasn’t going to finish this on time and I set it aside for later, settling on a very simply pieced quilt from Modern Minimal by Alissa Haight Carlton.  I drafted her design to fit my desired size and pieced it using Kaffe Fassett's shot cottons.  They are very soft and cozy, not to mention beautiful.  I quilted it with perle cotton 12 and some sashiko thread, using sashiko designs that were interesting to me.  Here's what it looks like.  

Milo's Quilt

Detail

I ended up being very happy with the quilt, but it’s never felt like his quilt.  What I  mean is that it isn't the quilt that was supposed to be his baby quilt.  I owe him one...

He will be turning one at the end of this month and I’ve been spending time with my nursery rhyme blocks to see if I could complete it for him.  Here are a few more blocks:

I have another couple of blocks that I’d like to make and then I’m going to try putting them together with some traditional pieced blocks.  I’m hoping that it feels right this time.

I am going to link this post to Freshlypieced.com