Tag Archives: baby quilt

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Another month, another finished quilt top.

I started the month with five finished quilt blocks from 18 months ago, originally intended for a mini quilt like my Cotton + Steel Mini Swap quilt. I decided I was less excited about a mini quilt and opted for creating fifteen more blocks to go with my original five. (This is where I mention that I realized this morning after finishing all fifteen blocks that I sewed them the wrong direction. In the end I decided the wild prints made my mistake not so noticeable. And done is better than perfect. Moving on.) With straight set blocks, this would bring my project to about 32" x 40". I cut all fifteen blocks, got organized on my trusty fast food tray, and set to chain piecing (and Netflix).

Like the first five blocks, my remaining fifteen blocks were made in sets of five. This photo shows five blocks in each row, created from five 10" squares. Each fabric is in each position once in the row. Since I was working in more blue and green with my additional blocks, I shuffled these all around for my final layout.

With a trip to QuiltCon, supervising some remodel work, and four other quilt finishes this month I had to settle for a finished top for my #8 UFO and One Monthly Goal project for February. Here's the finished quilt top.

I'm linking up to the February OMG Finish post.

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I'm happy to be participating in the fourth week of Project QUILTING. (You can find me at #110 if you'd like to vote for my project.) This week's theme is Brighter the Better. We were asked to crank up the saturation in our projects. Let me just say, my stash was made for this challenge. My initial pull of bright, vibrant fabrics resulted in a variety of bold stripes.

I was inspired on the morning of Valentine's Day by the heart blocks being posted on Instagram. I decided to go with fully saturated hearts for my project and chose one of my stripes to inspire the color palette.

I settled on the 5" finished size of the Simple Heart Block by Cluck Cluck Sew. I had a limited amount of the striped fabric and this size seemed to maximize the number of blocks I could create – seven. I cut a variety of background fabrics for these striped hearts. Then I went on to make additional pairings for more heart blocks. I decided early on I would include some square blocks interspersed with the heart blocks. In the end, I stopped sewing heart blocks when I got tired of making them. ;-) Inadvertently, I sewed 14 heart blocks on February 14th.

The next morning I filled in the remaining spots with squares and began work on a final layout. I could have spent days rearranging blocks on the design wall. I didn't want like fabrics to touch on an edge (corners were okay) and I wanted hearts (and more specifically striped hearts) in each row and column, and I wanted some balance.

I added the grey border so I wouldn't lose my points when I added my binding. I machine bind and it's not a perfect 1/4". I should probably do some work to figure out how to plan that my machine binding land in the right place by adding a little space around the quilt top when I trim it after quilting.

I thought I would walking food quilt crosshatch spaced 1 1/2", but when I started my quilting after 10pm last night I decided on 2 1/4". Two hours of quilting later, I finished that step at 12:40am. After I slept, my 4 year old daughter supervised my work attach the binding and then helped with my photo shoot. ;-) I had planned to bind it in grey to match the border, but decided in the vein of "Brighter the Better" I would use one of my blue fabrics. I had the perfect amount of this print! The backing fabric (also from my stash) was purchased a while ago to back a project that I recently gave away (in WIP status). I thought it was the perfect combination for this quilt.

My quilt finished at 34" x 34" which I think means it's the perfect size to go to a NICU.

I'm linking up to Persimmon Dreams for the Project QUILTING Brighter the Better Challenge and to TGIFF at A Quarter Inch from the Edge.

Thanks for visiting! Voting for Project QUILTING is open! You get to vote for your ten favorite projects. Mine is #110. Voting has ended. :-)

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Another day, another baby quilt. I actually finished both of these quilts on Saturday (never mind that my labels say September... at least it was close). I was able to deliver this one to a sweet baby girl yesterday. And her 4-year-old big brother received Zoom Zoom. Yay for quilt gifts!

Baby Girl has a room decorated in coral, salmon, mint and aqua, with grey accents. That meant shopping for fabric, since these are not colors in my stash (except the aqua, I suppose). I think the backing fabric is perfect and I was happy with what I found to accompany it, though I found the task a bit of a challenge. The background fabric on the front is a digitally printed fabric from Hawthorne Threads. They produce a wide variety of prints in many one-color options. Once I realized they had the right mint green, choosing the hummingbirds was easy. Baby Girl's parents' wedding featured a hummingbird motif, so I knew it was just the right print.

I designed the quilt before I decided on the fabrics. Initially my grey areas were pieced from two rectangles, but when I decided on a two-way directional print for those sections I redesigned it to be pieced from squares in alternating directions.

I chose to quilt with walking foot quilting. I'd planned free motion quilting for every other project at the top of my "to be quilted" list, so I thought I'd change it up with this one. I began by marking a line at a 60 degree angle with blue tape for my first line of quilting. Then I used the guide on my walking foot to make parallel lines with 1 1/2" spacing. I initially planned a second pass in the opposite 60 degree angle to make crosshatch quilting, but I ended up holding after the first pass. Sometimes done is better than perfect... or less detailed, in this case, is better than twice the quilting time. ;-)

I'm uncertain why my stitch length is so irregular with walking foot quilting. Perhaps it has to do with my tension. Thoughts?

I cut into my backing fabric to try it as the feature fabric in the center of the front of the quilt. Then I decided to stick with my initial plan of the poppies. That left me with a backing fabric too small to back the entire quilt. :-/ I decided to piece in my label instead of adding a secondary fabric in the backing. (Name and birthdate removed from the photo.)

Then all that was left was to roll it up and wrap it. I hope Baby Girl loves it. I know her mom does. :-) It was so hard to keep this one a secret. I just knew that if I shared even a glimpse, my friend would recognize her color palette and my surprise would be ruined.

Thank you for visiting!

I'm linking up to the Q3 Finish Along finishes party. See all my Q3 WIPs in my goal post.

A pattern is available for my Knock Knock baby quilt pattern (shown above) in one size, 36 1/2" x 36 1/2".