King of the Jungle Baby Quilt

I'm just tickled with this little quilt! When the planning began, I spent a lot of time online, searching for just the right fabric. I needed fabric with a jungle theme for a special little baby boy. The nursery was the most amazing nursery I had ever seen and I wanted to find fabric that coordinated. That meant  I needed something not-babyish, for lack of a better word, but I wanted something sweet. the minute I saw this fabric, I ordered it, but it sure did take me a long time to stumble upon it. Sometimes that technology I'm always fussing about comes in kinda handy! :)

                                

Then I pondered for weeks over how to turn it into a quilt. I wanted the animals to be the focus so I settled on stitching them into a square in a square. I pulled fabrics from my stash and auditioned a ridiculous number before whittling them down.  

 And then I hemmed and hawed about whether I ought to quilt it or take it to Jackie. I thought leaves would be a cute quilting design and I knew that Jackie's quilting would be just the ticket. I'm a beginning machine quilter and my leaves would be pretty sad looking leaves at this point. Jackie used a light gray thread and the quilting design is called 'blowing in the wind':

                                                 

Perfect!

                                        
When I picked it up, Jackie said that her daughter, who teaches and quilts too, wondered where I had bought the kit,  but Jackie told her that I just put it together from my stash. As cute as it is, I think the quilting always brings it to life.

I love the backing:

                                        

I used the same dotted fabric for the binding that I used in the sashing squares:

                                               

And I found that binding a baby quilt doesn't take nearly as long as the big quilts I usually make:

                                              

I ran into Hobby Lobby when I was in town to pick up some animal print tissue paper and as I walked through the store, I found this box:

                                     

Well, there was no way I was leaving the store without it. Look how perfect its going to be to wrap this quilt up:

                                                

And to top it all off. I was going to use my 40% of coupon and when I got home, I looked at my receipt and  the gal had charged me only $1.99 for the $19.99 box and with the coupon, I paid $1.19. What a deal! However, I'll go back when I'm in town next week and fess up. Wish I had caught that while I was there, but I was on a mission to get out of town... as usual, and I just wasn't paying attention... as usual. :)

I just rolled it up and sealed it into another perfect box for mailing:

                                                

It measures 42 x 48 and it is on its way to a sweet little baby boy.

The process for this quilt took much longer than I wanted, but I'm really happy with the way it turned out, and I hope it will be much-loved.