Greet the day with a ... quilt?

I’m so excited to be so close to starting work on my very first quilt. Several months ago, I fell in love with the Early Bird collection from Cosmo Cricket.

I mean, who wouldn’t love a pattern with happy toasters and singing birds on it? “Greet the day with a song!” “If we were meant to pop out of bed, we’d all sleep in toasters.” It’s too cute. And I love the color pattern. Needless to say, I wasn’t the only one who fell in love with it, and it’s taken some time to gather up all of the fabrics. The red cherry pattern was especially elusive, but I finally obtained it a few weeks ago. Step 2: picking out a quilt pattern that I (1) could do without going crazy (this is, after all, my very first quilt EVER) and (2) actually liked. I wanted it to be a little different, but I didn’t want to get in over my head.

Recently, Elizabeth Hartman of Oh, Fransson!, a pillar of the modern quilting world, has been on a blog tour promoting her new book, which reminded me to check out her blog again. It had been a while (and before I found Early Bird), and the last time I looked, quilting wasn’t high on my to-do list. But this time, I found exactly what I was looking for! The birthday cake quilt is perfect — great design, not too hard, just the right size, and it’s going to give me big blocks of this wonderful fabric to enjoy looking at. I can’t wait to get started. If only it weren’t for all those holiday sewing projects in my way….