subtle squares baby boy quilt

I made this quilt for one of my old college roommates - this superbly kind girl and her guitar-wielding husband are expecting a boy any day now. I've been wanting to use this sheep print in a baby quilt for awhile now (i had even curated a neat bundle with some black/white print fabrics) - and figured now was the time to finally use it. however, i ended up scrapping the other prints in favor of a mostly white quilt. Maybe it's dangerous to give a baby a predominantly white quilt, but perhaps he'll be a non-messy baby (?!?)

Here's a close up of the print:

So says the monoluna website, "Hill and Dale from the Taali collection is graphic landscape of rolling hills, grazing sheep and modern flowers. It is reminiscent of an abstract Scandinavian scene and coordinates with the rest of the Taali collection."  

neat little stacks of cut fabric

I used the same block pattern as the playing with ponies quilt from 2012. But this time I added sashing strips in the same color as the block background in order to give the illusion of 'floating squares'. I wanted to keep this one pretty minimal.

blocks in progress

seeing how it would look with yellow sashing...used it for the binding instead

I quilted straight lines on a diagonal - I really like the way the three lines look together. AND...I hand-sewed the binding for the first time! (I followed this youtube video for help). I've always machine stitched everything in the past for the sake of time, but I have an (unspoken) goal to try new sewing & quilting things out this year, so I thought I'd give hand sewing a whirl. All in all, it went very well! I enjoyed working on it while sitting on the couch, watching Harry Potter movies with the mister, rather than being solitarily cooped up in my sewing room. (Side note: i had a broken rib at the time. be careful cleaning your bathroom, kiddies! bath mats can be slippery sonsaguns. It happened the day prior, but i spent several days convincing myself it wasn't that big a deal. an X-ray (and my inability to move without whinging) a few days later revealed otherwise). I don't think I'll hand sew everything from here on out, but if time allows, I will definitely do it again.