My eight-year-old nephew is very fond of snuggling under a blanket on the settee so when he couldn't decide what he wanted for Christmas, I thought I'd make him a very simple personalised 'snuggling' quilt of his own.
I wasn't sure I'd be able to find enough pieces of suitably boyish fabric in my stash to make a whole quilt and I didn't really want to buy any new fabric, but the bonus of having a sizeable (and very untidy) stash is that all sorts of fabrics come to light when you start digging through the pile. There were a couple of lovely new quilting-weight cottons that I bought a few years ago and forgot about - one has a gnome pattern and the other has hens and chickens, part of an Ikea duvet cover (the rabbit), some 'raining cats and dogs' material that I got at a boot sale, and a large piece of plain denim.
The bits of gingham to spell out his name came from various small bits I had knocking around and the backing fabric was a beautiful piece of Cath Kidston fabric that Mum gave me a few years ago - luckily, it was just big enough for the quilt. The only thing I had to buy was the quilt batting itself which was very reasonably priced on eBay.
The construction was very simple - just sewing all the various components of the front together, sewing the back to the front around three sides and then putting the batting in between the front and back, sewing up the fourth side and quilting along the rows and all round the edges. I'm sure it's not really how you should construct a quilt but it seemed to work, I was pleased with the way it turned out and my nephew was very happy with his quilt and immediately put it to good 'lounging' use.