Lego Quilt (Quilt 18)

I'm very excited to have this quilt finished!  I've had it in my mind for months and I'm proud that I was able to get all this hand quilting done in a matter of 5 days.

 

I made this quilt for my nephew's birthday and he really likes lego.  Now, if you've ever tried looking for lego prints, there are only two options - Spoonflower and Japanese prints off of Etsy.  Both options are very expensive, so I decided to go the "make giant lego blocks" route.

 

I started off with a drawing in my graph paper notebook.  I decided that each lego unit would be 3" finished and then drew out my quilt until it reached about 50" squared.  The trick to drawing out a successful lego quilt is to make sure that you make up the blocks to add up to several "large pieces."  I made up 6 large blocks that I could sew into my final quilt. 

 

For the handquilting I traced on circles with water soluble pens/pencils with a stencil I made and then used pearl cotton size 5 to make my stitches.  There are 289 circles on this quilt and I did each color block in a matching color thread.

 

When it came time to make the back, I chose a nice multicolor print that would hide all my hand quilting (so many different colors).  There was only 1.5m left of the owl print, so I added the middle section with the lego head.

 

The lego head is a 10" finished block.  I drew this one out as well - a 1" strip for the neck and a 2" strip for the top head piece (looking back, I would have made this 1.5").  I used tiny squares (I think 1-2"?) and sewed them on the corners to give the head a more rounded look.  I studied lego face pictures on google pictures and then drew out my own freehand onto Heat n' Bond lite.  I then ironed them down and zigzag stitched.

 

The binding I think is fabulous - I love the black and white and that it's zigzag!  It's the chevron print from Ann Kelle's remix collection.  I think it finishes off the quilt nicely.

The quilt is all crinkly and washed - ready for it's new home!