Irish Baby Quilt

My sister requested that I make an irish-themed baby quilt for her dear friends who are Irish and expecting their first child soon.   

She decided that we should use the Irish Flag AND shamrocks in the final quilt.   But I didn't like the Irish flag , and couldn't find a good place to put it, so instead I used the colors from the Irish Flag and cut out shamrocks and put them around the inside borders of the quilt.  

The best thing about this quilt was the fun text around the borders.  We used the first 4 lines from "The Old Irish Blessing"   I have made a tutorial on how to quilt text on dark fabric to use in your quilt and it can be found ON THIS BLOG POST.    A video tutorial is included.  

For the back of the quilt, I used strips of fabric from the front, and a leprauchan-doggie fabric ;c)  

I also made this cute label with fabric markers!  

Here is the finished project!

 I did an echo stitch around the text, and did a funky fun shamrock echo in each of the 4 corners.

 For the center I did a thick zigzag stitch outline around the appliqued name "Keelan"

Oh, and sometimes when I am stuck on a project, I will ask my MOTHER if she has any suggestions.  And the things she comes up with are SO random and "out there" it's comical!  For this project, she suggested that I put "white fluffy sheep" on the quilt.   Which is not such a crazy idea. . but we had shamrocks and flags. .. the sheep were just from her head!
So, to be funny, I decided to make a little stuffed sheep and I shipped it to my sister with the quilt to surprise her!  ;c)