Barley's Quilt

I've been feeling pretty grumpy for the last, oh, few months.  In an effort to fight off the near-constant irritability, fueled by work stress, home stress, chores, being sick, snippy offspring, whatever...I've been trying to spend more time quilting.  It's an activity that I (mostly) enjoy, but have not actively engaged in, in literally years.

I finally dug out some patches I started 6 years ago.  Based on simple line drawings that my youngest used to make on any available paper, I turned the idea into a patchwork design, with grand ideas of making him a quilt out of it.  I started with bright colors on a blue sky, and a year later, when I showed him some of the blocks, he wanted it on night sky with stars instead.  So, back to the drawing board.  Then I lost steam, got busy, and the blocks languished on my sewing table.

The 3-year old who drew all the doodles is now 9, and has no memory of those early "jet planes" he used to draw.  He specializes in dragons these days (no, I don't plan to start piecing dragons...though I did get lucky when I went in search of backing fabric!).  I am a little sad that he doesn't remember the design anymore.  I have more cut strips to piece more jet plane blocks, but since he doesn't even remember where the idea came from, that seemed kind of pointless.  Teddy helped me lay out the blocks in a triangle formation, and I spent a weekend adding background to fill in the empty space.  I am pleased with the way it came out, and anxious to finish the quilt before Barley doesn't even care about planes or dragons anymore.  Here is the finished top:

The whole thing is at the quilt shop to be machine finished.  I thought about trying to do the quilting myself, but wanting to be done before he hits high school, paying money to someone else seemed the better idea.