My son's first quilt!

I asked on the blog a while back if you guys had any tips for me with my 7 year old son who is dying to learn to quilt.  We started off small with a ticker tape snack mat.  I sewed up a small mat of Kona Ash and a light colored denim (back) and made a pillowcase style mat.  I then let the boys do tickertape with some of my favorite scraps.  I was surprised when my 7 year old did this:

And I will be honest that I *almost* said "that's not how you do it" when I realized he made letters of his name instead of the regular way but then I thought "What is wrong with me...his way is better!"  I love how he "kicked it up a notch" and made it his own.  How many ticker tape quilts have you seen with words written on it?  None, that's how many! The entire reason I read blogs is for inspiration...not just so I can copy something- that is just not fun for me.  He had exactly the right idea. I had him pin the pieces into place and then I went around them with the machine.  He is not much for tedious tasks yet.

One of the twins did this one (and I do need to trim them up, I know).  He is a train fanatic and he immediately went to the American Jane punctuation tickets.  He told me they are his tickets to ride a train.  Melted my heart...  He calls it a "Snack Mack."  Once again, I like his version better.  Snack Mack it is!

Fueled by his success, the oldest became more insistent about starting his own quilt.  I decided to just go for it.  I also told myself to tell him to do a good job and take breaks when I saw him getting sloppy instead of getting frustrated.  You know what, it worked.  If I saw him getting tired I'd call break time.  I had to rip a seam or two where he sewed things backwards but for the most part he was very diligent about keeping close to 1/4" seam as you can see by the finished product:

He did a great job!  He picked out 4 layer cake pieces left over from my MBS project with Deb Strain's Java.  He told me he needed more brown to balance out all the blues.  I had a couple of 5" squares left from Lily&Will2 that were brown (quilt forthcoming on that one) so we threw those in.  Here is how we divided the task:

Me: Rotary cutting (scary!), pinning, sewing edges "pillowcase style" then turning out and top stitching the edge shut
Him: Ironing, Sewing the quilt top, quilting, receiving kudos.

He wanted me to share on facebook and I am sharing with you guys as well.  The night he made it I put it over my legs because I was cold and he got a big smirk and said "hey mom, this is coming in handy, isn't it??"  He is already on me for quilt number 2.  Any pattern suggestions???