My niece is having a baby at the end of this month. My nephews and nieces all get quilts when they have a baby. Thank heavens, I think they are slowing down now. This may be the last one. And this baby (we know it’s a girl) is getting a cute one for sure.

So I just want to say that I am not terribly fond of these somewhat complicated quilt instructions. If I had my way, every quilt would be improv. Or my other preferred way is 300 blocks of the exact same pattern. That way, a bad cut or a mis-measurement is not that big a deal. Lots of focus on color and design…not so much on fussiness. Plenty more fabric and ways to get around an error.

But this was a kit I purchased at the local quilt shop. And while I liked most of the fabric, they had a much duller color for the body of the fox. So I scrounged around in my sewing room and found something that had *just enough* fabric to be perfect for the fox body. But not an inch to spare.

That makes a slightly stressful process.

And here is an image of the many post-it notes necessary to label all the parts of this quilt.

Starting at A, we were well into HH and II and JJ. That’s a lot of different pieces.

But I managed to get it assembled.

I kept the quilting simple but fun. And added some lettering to the white border dedicating the quilt to the coming arrival, with my name and the year.

I’m pleased with the way it turned out. The assembly was a bit painful, but that’s just me. I always find that part hard to wrap my brain around.

If you are interested in the pattern, you can find it here.

I hope your new year is off to a good start. We have had almost all cloudy and foggy days.

The sun needs to show up soon.

Happy late winter. I’m already waiting for spring.

We’ll check back in soon!