R-O-B-C Quilt

Here's a quilt I gave to my brother, Rob C., last year around Father's Day. I had hoped to give it to him for his birthday in early April, but got delayed. The block I used came from a show I saw on Simply Quilts many years ago. The show's guest quilter, Raymond Houston, developed a system of 24 blocks, each consisting of a simple line drawn from one side of the block to another. Each block is named after a letter of the alphabet. You can choose several letters and combine all the lines into one block. I chose R,O,B and C to represent my brother's name. I colored the sections of the block in the colors of the Oakland A's, Rob's favorite baseball team. Below is the block.

Using Electric Quilt software I rotated and flipped sets of blocks around until I liked what I saw.

Rob's quilt is unlike any I've ever made. Rob's quilt has been a long time coming, as most of my family members have received their quilts years ago. Many of those quilts are in simple checkerboard patterns. I'm glad Rob's design was really special, and I hope he thinks it was worth the wait.

Enjoy your quilt, Rob!

P.S. Raymond Houston has a website called NachoGrandmasQuilts.com . As Raymond says, "these are not your Grandma's quilts". A few months after I finished Rob's quilt I took a class called Symmetry Play from Raymond at quiltuniversity.com. In the class Raymond goes into detail about his system and how to use symmetry to create unique blocks and quilts. I learned a lot, and plan to use the techniques in future projects. I told Raymond about my brother's quilt, and posted photos of the block and the quilt on the class website. That was fun.