Ryan's Birthday Quilt (Free motion Quilted)

Happy Birthday, Ryan!

I made this quilt for my brother's 30th birthday.  The purple fabric is a duvet cover I found at a thrift store.  In fact, most of the material used to make the block columns is sheet fabric-- mostly pillow cases.  I did pull out a few fat quarters I purchased from a fabric store that I felt complimented the other colors.  

The free motion quilting design I used is called Paisley, however I did not follow the design exactly.  Instead stitching every inch of the quilt, I would stitch away in long lines and start a new paisley in open space. I also wasn't concerned about coming to the same point with each paisley curve. The result you can see below.

Front:
The front was very easy to construct.  I just sewed together blocks of the same width and differing lengths together and straighted them up when I finished with my rotary cutter so that each column would be the same width.  As I mention below, I actually made this quilt twice, so I didn't have enough purple sheet fabric to finish the edges.  I don't sweat it when this happens-- I just fill in with patchwork.  I think the result is pretty neat looking--there won't ever be another quilt like it!

Back:
The fabric for the back is an old kids' sheet.  Rivers, rocks, and trees-- perfect for Ryan!  I unfortunately made this quilt twice. The first time I really didn't like the way my free motion quilting design was going (I tried a design way too difficult for me), and I ripped it apart.  The result was that this nature sheet wasn't big enough to cover the back a second time.  But if this happens to you, just put some patchwork in there.  You can find a much more sophisticated version of this here and here.

Here is a picture of the first quilt that I tore apart after attempting that difficult free motion quilting design:

We tried it out before I flew home with it.  Matt wanted to keep it..