Mum's Birthday Quilt

 I have made a start to my Mum's 60th Birthday Celebration Quilt.

I fell in love with this range of fabric, Ruby by Bonnie & Camille for Moda.

But I could only find it for sale on ebay & I wasn't sure about paying the price being asked. 

I wanted something feminine without being too "fluffy" or too old fashioned and chintzy.  My Mum changes her house-decor much more frequently than the average person, so luckily I was not tied into a particular colour scheme. Although she has a blue/duck egg living room atm and her favourite colour is yellow.

 A couple of weeks ago I popped into the annual sale at my local quilting store "Creative Quilting" and picked up these fat quarters. (for less than half of what Ruby was selling for on ebay) The pink stripes on the left will be the binding.  I have no idea what ranges most of them are from, as most of the selvages were blank but there was some "Anna Griffin Lizzie Collection" and "Dream a little Dream with Me, for In the beginning fabrics" 

A nice mixture of graphic & floral prints in pomegranate pink, yellow, spring green and light blue.

As for the pattern, I really wanted to attempt some stars or traditional style blocks, but with a modern twist.

I found plenty of great free patterns & sew alongs like the

"Oh My Stars" quilt along

or pinwheels in the park by Four Wise Monkeys, a free pdf on Sewmamasew

Crazymoms seeing stars quilt sew along

Made in Cherry

Scrap Jar stars

Sparkle punch Quilt Along

As well as the fabulous patterns here. (Swoon & On a whim are my favs)

So after hours of precious sewing time spent on the computer searching, I finally settled on this one -
Quilt a long 2010 by Blue is Bleu

Lots of variation and I can mix & match blocks to my hearts content.  I love the look of scrappy quilts rather than a clean "matchy" look. I might even add my own design to the middle square.

The pattern was designed to use scraps, but after "doing me sums" I worked out how many squares of each size I would need and managed to use all my fat quarters with only a tiny bit of wastage so far.  I used 20 fat quarters in total (added one from my stash)

Mum's Birthday isn't till May, but I have put some money aside to have this professionally quilted so need to get it finished asap.  If you have any recommendations for a UK based quilter (SW if poss) I would love to hear them!