britton's 5th birthday quilt

Yep, I'm early here, since Britton's birthday isn't until August 2nd.  But I'm itching to share her birthday quilt with you!  I thought up this quilt after getting one of my little fabric catalogues.  I saw this quilt kit:

But I didn't like the big stars.  So I thought about the tiny baby quilts I had made before and BAM, I had Britton's birthday quilt design! You can see the little stars and this quilt's beginnings here.  I got to work on an excel spreadsheet for the color movement, and since Britton loves rainbows (and rainbow is her favorite color) I knew she'd catch it if the rainbow wasn't just right.  The colors had to feel like they were slowly moving from one to the next.   Every fabric in this quilt (other than the white background) is a scrap, and since the individual blocks were a mere 2.5 inches each, I didn't much scrap.

I had another backing in mind that I had been eyeing for weeks.  But as I was walking up to the cutting counter, this mermaid print caught my attention and I made a snap decision to go with the mermaids.  While the other backing fabric would have been beautiful design-wise, the mermaids were just so Britton.  And they are a nice reminder that this quilt is for a little girl.

I thought I might border the front with this rainbow thread, but in the end I didn't want anything taking away from the movement of the stars.  So I used the fancy settings on my sewing machine and stitched these rainbow stars along the white border.  In the middle I added Britton's handprint, just like for Barrett's quilt.

I quilted the entire quilt in my lazy loopy free-motion quilting, except for the stars.  Then I outlined each star, so they would poof out a little from the quilt.  Piecing the stars into the quilt was a pain because I was essentially making it up as I went.  So I needed the loopy quilting to hide the fact that there were so many seams in the white space!

Britton already spied the mermaid fabric, so she has her suspicions.  But she hasn't seen the quilt yet, and I can't wait for her to get it on her birthday!