Birthday Surprise-Check!

Today is my parents' birthday! That's right. My folks have the same birthday, but they are a year apart. I made them this quilt and I call it "Crabby Patty." Going Coastal is such a great line and as soon as I saw it, I knew I would be making something out of the Crab Walk prints. I mentioned in this post that my family has been visiting the Eastern Shore for over 20 years. Eating blue crabs is a big part of that experience. In fact, my parents are there right now, celebrating their birthday and our friend's birthday.

I paired the crabbies with Kona White and made your basic stack and slash/wonky 9-patch (I don't know what it's really called but those are two names I've heard before). I love it - it's super versatile and easy and fun and fast. (Much like the traditional 9-patch.) You cannot go wrong. I did this Central Park version back in January:

Same method - totally different feel. Try it, you'll like it!

For the Crabby Patty, I made the finished blocks ginormous because I wanted to make sure the crabs were whole and visible. I think they finish at... 16.5"-ish. I was trying to make it a rectangle, rather than a square - no real reason. So I did a longer wonky piano key type border at the top and a shorter one at the sides. I had a math mess up (wait - have you heard me say that before? Is this deja vu all over again?!) and the quilt, which was to finish at 65"x80" finished at 65"x70". This is a function of - a) doing basic arithmetic on paper late at night and b) me being the person attempting to do that math. C'est la vie. Moving on.

I like how the white gives it a negative space element and ties it in with a more traditional 9-patch. I didn't do a lot of messing around with placement, except to make sure the crabs were walking in different directions. The print itself has them walking in two directions, so I just flipped a couple 90 degrees in my stack before cutting them up.

Here's the back - I love the bottle cap print!

The starfish prints are pretty great too!

I did wavy grid quilting for the first time in the center and I really liked it. It's about a 3-4" grid here, but I can see it being really versatile and it's pretty quick.

I just did straight line quilting around the border. I let the right angle get away from me a little bit, but it's no biggie. It makes a nice frame around the center panel.

I spray basted but didn't get it quite as flat as I should have, so there was a little puckering and the center panel on the back shifted a bit. After it was washed and all wrinkly and comfy, it didn't make a huge difference.

I don't label most of my quilts, but I decided to do something for this one. I just wrote on the binding in one of the corners on the back. I pieced the binding from the leftovers of the front.

Happy birthday, parentals! Hope you like it!