Big plus, little plus (what begins with plus?)

After about five years, "Big Plus, Little Plus"* is finally finished

 

It'll be for a little boy due any day now...I'm rather excited that I finished before the baby came!

 

This time I took pictures at my parents' cottage.  I took them just as the sun was setting, which was rather bad for coloring but great for background.

The quilt is made of a bunch of strips; it was the easiest way to get all of the little pluses in correctly.  I started the design by putting in the big plus and then added the little pluses until I had them scattered about nicely.  

I then made a crazy spreadsheet with the color/size in of each piece in it's location.  Instead of just working on a strip or two at a time I first pieced the top two pieces of each row, then added the third piece, etc.  It was a rather silly way of doing it and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what strip I had.  I'm going to chalk up the foolishness to still being a rather new quilter when I started, as it is quilt number 7.  (To put it in perspective, I just started working on quilt 62.  They aren't all done, but I do have more experience now.)

The photo above is my favorite.  The one below is the silliest...I think the quilt looks like it is trying to play hide and seek and hide by the logs.

For quilting I used my plus design and a lightly variegated white/grey thread.  

There are whales in minky on the back; I couldn't believe how well the colors matched!  And it is bound in red sateen as normal.

*It took me until I was editing the photos to realize that this shape is not really a plus.  That's a long time of getting the shape wrong, so I'm going to stick with the name to remind me to actually look at what I'm doing.

Finishing this was my goal for July.  I'm also linking up with Finish It Up Friday and Sew Cute Tuesday.