I wanted to make a baby gift for a friend who is decorating the nursery in yellow and white. The gift item had to be gender neutral so I thought of a sun and the lyrics of the old favorite “You are my Sunshine” right away. I decided to make the sun using a New York Beauty Block. This is my first New York Beauty and it wasn’t too difficult. I followed the pattern here for Block 0.

I wanted to make sure that the mini quilt would work in the nursery so I tried to include many different shades of yellow in my very scrappy sunshine. I had an opportunity to use the Aurifil Lana 12/2 thread that was sent to me months ago. I hadn’t made anything yellow enough till now! I used it for the top thread only and quilted in the ditch around the points of the sun and then 1/4″ inside the circle. I used white thread to stitch concentric circles outside of the sun, 1/4″ apart.

I stamped the words using my heat set black silkscreen ink. I found that it works best if I use a paint brush to apply the ink very lightly to the bottom of the stamp. I hope this mini quilt brightens up the nursery for baby!