Big Birthday Project in the Works

So, my Little Mister is turning two next month. I can't believe he's growing up so quickly! I've been thinking about his birthday gifts for a while now, and I really want to make at least one of them with my own two hands.

I've been playing around on Pinterest and Flickr (when I should have been crafting or blogging according to my New Rule), and spent a bunch of time looking at cute stitched alphabet projects. I've been working with Little Mister on the alphabet recently, and he's really into it, so I was thinking that an alphabet project would be perfect for him!

Here are a few ABC projects I've been ogling:

{ABCs by A Lovely World}

{ABC Mini Quilt by nanaCompany]

{ABC Book by nanaCompany}

After looking at projects for hours, I was leaning toward making something like the ABC Book, but a little more "boy-ified." I planned to make a page for each letter with an animal or object (or maybe more than one) that started with the letter for that page.

Yesterday, I was looking at the ABC Book more and found that it was made using a design in the book S is for Stitch by Kristine Czepuryk from Pretty By Hand.

I checked out some of the preview pages for the book on Amazon (you can see some of the cuteness of Kristine's alphabet on the book cover photo to the right). She includes two sets of alphabet object designs, one for girls and another for boys. One of the pages I could preview has a photo of all the boy images stitched up and sewn into quilt. I had an "aha moment."

Remember that amazing sewing machine I got recently? Well, if I put together my alphabet embroideries as quilt blocks, I can take advantage of it's awesomeness. I don't think I'm ready for free motion quilting just yet, but I'm pretty sure I can rock some straight line quilting to break in the new machine.

I already made a list of boyish objects to stitch up for each letter of the alphabet, but I'm excited to get my copy of S is for Stitch so I can see what designs Kristine put together. While I wait for my book to arrive, I'm going to work on figuring out my quilt's color scheme and maybe the finished size and block layout. I'll post more as I go through the planning and stitching process.

I'm so excited to make this quilt!