baby quilt for Joel

My nephew and his wife are the proud parents of a new baby boy, Joel, born on May 12 - Mother's Day! I've had the quilt top for this new little guy done for a couple of months and just this week started quilting it.

The day after he was born I got busy pinning it. Just a bit of a teaser here to give you an idea of the color scheme without giving away too much...

And here are some detail shots of the quilting I've done so far. My favorite part - the sun!

Some spirals...

Clamshells...

Pebbles in the stream...

And a little bit bigger teaser...

Except for the spirals, I've not quilted any of these patterns before. I used Angela Walters' book Free Motion Quilting with Angela Walters for both inspiration and how-to help. Her instructions are diagrammed so clearly that I just jumped right in and tried some new things! You can find it online here.

So far I have three of the six main sections quilted - halfway there! My goal is to finish the quilting this weekend, binding next week, then off in the mail it goes to baby Joel's house :)