A lap Quilt For Two

This weekend was the wedding for one of my good friends, someone I've known for almost 30 years, and like a good quilter, I decided to make him a quilt for a wedding present. I was completely unsure about the color scheme in his residence, so I kept it to neutral colors. The Quilt was designed in EQ7, modifying one of their foundation-pieced block patterns, and doing a lot of redesigning on the fly, as I could not figure out how to get this particular layout to work properly in the program.

As you can see in the EQ7 design the borderd squares are composed of 4 blocks with a cross inside, instead of a square block with pieced sashing and a 9-patch keystone block - which is how I constructed it..

From start to finish took me 5 days of very concentrated effort. I paper pieced the cats.

Here is the finished quilt:

And some photos of the quilting detail.

I could have done more, but I had only a handful of evenings to get this quilted in time for the wedding. I used a fusible polyester batting, because it was fast. I'm OK with the results - I just wish I had more time to spend on it so I could have used a batting with a bit more loft and a bit softer.

I will be writing up this pattern, and showing some alternate design options - like this one:

Had I been confident the recipients would have liked a rainbow quilt, I would have made this for them. But the one I made is a more elegant presentation.