Love Plus baby quilt: A finish!

I'm so excited to finally get to reveal my latest finish, which I'm calling the Love Plus baby quilt!

This quilt was gifted to my wonderful cousin, who recently had her second child, a little girl. The quilt was already going to be a bit late, but then the little lady decided to arrive a few weeks early (on Christmas Day, no less), so I was hurrying to finish it up when we returned from our holiday travels.

The colors were chosen to match her nursery, and though they're totally outside of my normal color scheme, I really love how they turned out. This quilt was completely sewn from my stash (bonus!), including the big Amy Butler lotus print I used on the back, which was one of the first fabrics I bought when I started sewing five years ago.

I adapted the pattern from the "Dream Big" quilt in Camille Roskelley's book Simplify: Quilts for the Modern Home. Basically, I got rid of the borders and deleted several rows and columns to make it a more appropriate baby size. If you're looking for something similar, I came across this pattern, which uses the same technique to create the pluses (rectangles + squares) as the pattern in the book. Also, this free tutorial from In Color Order uses an all-squares technique to make the pluses. (She also has a pattern for sale that includes more sizes.)

I quilted it using a cream thread. It's pretty hard to see in these pics, but I used horizontal lines in varying distances. I was originally planning to also do some vertical lines in a sort of crosshatch, but some of the horizontal quilting caused some of my piecing to get a bit wonky (ugh! I was so annoyed. My piecing had been almost perfect, which is not always the case for me. I'm hoping it won't be too noticeable once it's washed, but still.), and I was afraid adding the vertical lines would only make it worse. It's bound in a mustard crosshatch, which I particularly love against the all-red backing.

This baby's in the mail and will hopefully soon have a baby snuggled up inside!

For kicks, I'm linking up to this month's Sew the Library over at Fabric Mutt and Fabric Tuesday at Quilt Story.