After I posted my last quilt to do list back in February, Denise told me I didn’t need to worry about a quilt for baby Ben, but since I really, really wanted to make one and she didn’t absolutely forbid me, I came up with this Harry Potter themed quilt for him. It seemed fitting for the boy who showed up just a few months before the book seven frenzy really got rolling, whose mom cast on my first house scarf for me and got me knitting again.

I used six different Harry Potter prints combined with about a dozen other fabrics from my stash. This was the first quilt I pieced with my new machine, and I was so eager to get started that I skipped the very important step of checking my seam allowance, which led to the center blocks being just a big smaller than intended. Rather than cut down all the pieces for the border to fit the new dimensions, I just added a narrow strip around the center section. I think the end result there was better than my original plan. I didn’t discover my other not quite minor mistake until I’d layered the top and batting and backing and done some of the quilting: I’d turned one section of the center the wrong way around when sewing things together, so some of the red points are out of place. I don’t think it’s too disruptive, and I sure didn’t want to have to undo quilting, layering, and piecing to fix it. I think of it as a little surprise waiting for people who look closely.