Seeing Spots

My oldest friend in the world had a baby just a couple weeks ago!  Crystal and I met when we were around 3 years old, grew up together, were roommates in college, and now are having sons just a month apart.  Well, the due dates said it would be just a month apart, but little Josiah Wright decided to make his debut a tad early (not that I would object to mine doing the same).

Crystal has always loved giraffes and decided to do the nursery in a giraffe theme.  I figured she would get a lot of giraffe things, and she knows a lot of crafty people, so I tried to think of a way of making a giraffe quilt that no one else would think of.  This is what I came up with:

I appliqued giraffe spots onto squares to make a big giraffe print.  I was originally just going to use browns on the applique squares, but it struck me that I could incorporate her other nursery colors into the zigzag stitches around each spot!

I quilted around each spot in both light brown and dark brown so you can see the spots on the back side as well.

It took some time to figure out how to draw the spots so they looked good.  After trying to arrange random spots on a square, Josh advised me to notice how the spots fit together like puzzle pieces in the fabric that had the giraffe print on it already.  So then, I cut the applique paper into squares the size of my background fabric and sketched out an entire square as a cohesive unit.  They came together so quickly after that!  That Josh has a good eye.  And the observation came in handy when I frosted these cookies for Crystal's baby shower as well: