A-quilting we will go, in triplicate

I was headed to South Carolina to see my brand-new niece at the end of August, but I had a terrible time getting out the door.  The biggest problem was that I'd decided to make a quilt for baby Amy, and another quilt for her sister Alanna, and another quilt for her sister Alesia.  I picked what was sworn to be a very fast quilt to assemble, and maybe it is, but not if you're making three of them, and not if one is for a baby and is made up of 4-inch squares.

A flurry of material getting cut down to size  The yellow fabric with the black chickens on it, which I dearly love, didn't make the cut.

 Somehow it made sense at the time to line up all of the fabrics on the floor. What was I thinking???

 And then I moved them to the wall.  This is the front of Alanna's quilt.  She's 10.

 This is the front of Alanna's quilt.  She's 13.

And this is the front of baby Amy's quilt.  She was not yet a month old at the time.  The method for this quilt is that you make individual sandwiches -- fabric right side out, batting, fabric right side out -- and stitch diagonal lines that serve as the quilting.  You then sew the pieces with the back sides together, leaving a raw edge on the front.  When the quilt is completed, you  cut at close intervals all along those seams, and then you throw it in the washing machine and the seams unravel slightly, and the end result is darling.

Repetition is the name of this game at my house.  Not only do each of the girls share some fabrics but some of the fabrics were first used in quilts I made for my daughters.  The psychotic kitty fabric you see, muddy green background, black cats with white eyeballs?  That was the first fabric chosen for a quilt.  The yellow fabric with the sandals printed on?  That's another one.  The third fabric up from the left in the baby's quilt is a St. Patrick's Day print, because her dad's parents were married on that day; and the stripedy looking piece on the bottom left depicts Las Vegas, where her dad and his mother (my sister, Amy) lived for a year or so.  Also, those black pieces that seem to have constellations on them?  Those are actually bicycles, and that fabric is on Amy's quilt because her dad rides a bike everywhere he goes.