As I mentioned in this post back in November, I was starting on a new quilt for my brother. It was quite an ambitious undertaking: until then, I had made only baby quilts using patterns from books. For this one, I would be increasing the size significantly (I was planning on 70″x70″) and going off of a pattern I made myself with this online pattern generator:

My brother's Quilt Pattern

It’s supposed to look like this shield from the PC game Ultima. Yes, my brother is a huge geek! Where do you think I get it from? 🙂

I had no idea how much fabric to buy, so I had to constantly go back to the fabric store to buy more. Luckily they didn’t run out of any! I did find it a challenge to find fabrics that weren’t too feminine; after all, this is a quilt for a grown man. I ended up using leaf prints, abstract prints and solids.

Partway through finishing the strips.

Quickly I realized the downfalls of not using a pre-made pattern… you end up finding out things through trial and error. I learned that I made the squares with half one color, half another too small. So I had to go back and re-do some squares.

Laid out, ready to be stitched together.

Another challenge I ran into was my limited space. I didn’t have a flat surface (table) big enough to lay the quilt out on, so it laid in pieces on my bed and the floor a lot. It also made my basting less than effective, which made the quilting process difficult. I ended up having to take out big sections of stitching and having to quilt them over again.

Sewing, sewing, sewing...

There were many times I wanted to give up, or start over again, but I’m glad I didn’t. It ended up coming out really well. I also used my new sewing machine (Singer Confidence Quilter) that I received as a gift from Mike’s parents for Christmas. It has some nifty stitches, one of which I ended up using on this quilt.

Closeups of stiching.

Finally I was able to finish the thing and give it to my brother, just a few months late 🙂 Thanks to my brother for being so patient!

Of course, I took the finished product picture upside down.

Overall, I’m happy with how it turned out. I’m going back to baby quilts for the time being because my sister and my best friend’s TWO sisters are all pregnant, all due in August! Better get crackin’! 🙂