A Quilt for Sagen

I had a power session yesterday to complete the quilting, binding, and label for the comfort quilt I've been making for our neighbor's 12 year old son Sagen, who has an osteosarcoma (bone tumor) on his leg and has been receiving chemotherapy in preparation for surgery probably later this month.  

Sagen and his mom squinting in the blazing sunset with the finished quilt--he loved it!  He asked me, "How did you make this?" and I told him how quilters buy yards of fabric, cut it up into small pieces and then sew it all back together again :).  Here are some details:

I started with quilting the black chains.  I had seen a fun detail on Pinterest where a quilter had interspersed a few zig zag stitches among straight line quilting.  I used my three-step zig zag stitch for this quilt. 

This is what the zig zag detail looks like on the back. I like it!

I then changed thread numerous times to quilt all the green blocks, using a very simple curvy line in the prints. My sister said they looked a bit like hands.  Originally I was just going to leave the white background unquilted, but it looked so unfinished that I quickly did a large meander through.  I left the white squares in the blocks unquilted for variety. You can see the green print on the edges that I used to for the binding.

The backing was another Pinterest idea, a "zipper" style, with a simple piecing technique.  I had to do this because of MATH problems--I had not ordered quite enough of the striped flannel from Connecting Threads so bought some black flannel from my local fabric store to expand the backing.  I then had so much of the flannel left that I made a matching pillowcase.

Here is Sagen wrapped in his quilt.  I named it "Love and Luck" and told him that the "hands" in the blocks could either be the hands of all the people helping him, or the hands he's going to high five when he beats cancer.  I also told him the significance of the red block, the heart of the quilt where all the extra love is. He loved it and the pillowcase--his mom said he always brings his own pillow to the chemo sessions.  We're all pulling for you, Sagen!