Sometimes simple isn't easy.

My sister asked me to make my nephew a twin size quilt for his first big kid bed.  The only direction I was given was to not make it babyish. This way he could grow into it.  Oh, and blue was the color requested. That really narrows it down right?!  So I had fun shopping for blue since I feel like I work with girly colors a lot. I narrowed my fabrics down to Modern Meadow and Heather helped turn me onto Hope Valley.
The pattern is from the Material Obsession book and it's the first quilt, Avalon. I knew I didn't want to do anything with stars  or flowers or a lot of intricate piecing that a little boy might not go for.  Here is my final product.

 And the back (it really isn't so neon, the sun was shining through it!)

 I have since written a personalized message on the label. And yes, I did go a little cutesy on that green heart fabric. After all, he's 2 1/2 and I'm his aunt. Gotta have some lovey-ness on there!

So why wasn't this easy? The quilting. I thought it would be easy to just mimic the squares with the quilting. I thought I could just put the guide on my walking foot and sew the boxes 2 inches smaller than the blocks.

It was not easy. You really can't pivot the quilt that much and get it under your machine. I wound up doing all the vertical lines at one shot and then all the horizontal lines. That meant drawing on all the "boxes" and tying off each of those corners. I still haven't mastered hiding my threads if anyone has a good tutorial.

Oh well, this funny little guy is worth it.