Do I remember how to quilt?

My daughter and husband are expecting a baby boy in December and have decided on a policeman theme for the baby's room in honor of his daddy. What a cute idea, right? We must be the only ones that think that because there is no bedding or baby items with a police theme anywhere. Fireman, yes. But no police. "No worries, darling daughter, I can sew." It slipped out before I could help myself.  You sewers know how that happens! I love quilts and have made a few but the last one was 18 years ago in anticipation of my youngest child. Ay yi yi!

How hard can it be, right? Well, it turns out there are no quilt / applique designs in that theme either. So, I had to completely start from scratch.  After looking at quilt designs that she liked, we decided on a mix of applique and simple four-patch squares for the quilt top. For the appliques, I found a very cute car design in "Quilts, Bibs, Blankies... Oh My" (adorable designs!!)

   

but no luck finding anything else police related (except for handcuffs and guns but we thought that might not be too child friendly!) I found a couple coloring book pages that I used to create templates for a police hat and shield.

 
I practiced with some scrap fabric until we came up with the final templates for the appliques.

I drafted the design (hee hee, that sounds so official for the chicken scratch shown below, doesn't it), calculated the measurements and converted to fabric quantities.

Next came picking the fabric. Turns out my daughter is quite picky when it comes to the colors she wants. She said blues and greens but that's not really what she meant. She meant very, very, very specific shades of blues and greens. Four quilt shops, hundreds of blue and green fabrics and three hours later and we had the fabrics. Four-patch squares are done. Appliqued squares up next!