Wednesday, May 08, 2013

Baby Quilt

I am determined to someday make a quilt for the Toddler. Unfortunately, I’ve been wanting to attempt this project since before he was born (more than two years ago). Thus, at my pace, he’ll probably be a teenager by the time I’m finished. Perhaps I should skip right to a full-size pattern.

My friend
Megan noticed that I’ve been pinning quilt ideas on Pinterest and thoughtfully brought over her copy of Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson.

Inside was a tutorial for a sweet little baby quilt. It’s technically not a whole lot of quilting - there is no patching involved, for example, but it was a good place to start as I thought it was a good fit for my ability level. So off I trundled to the store to pick up some supplies.


And this is what I ended up with:


A sweet little flower print on the top and a soft blue flannel for the underside.


Sweet, but not obnoxiously baby-ish, right?


This quit is a little different from a traditional quilt in that a zigzag stitch on the sewing machine is used intermittently throughout the quilt to hold everything together. It makes it a bit softer and flexible, almost. I used a lime green thread which adds a wee bit of pizzaz. (see photo below).

We have a quilt that belonged to my grandmother and while it’s quite beautiful, it has so many stitches running across the surface that it’s almost stiff. And segmented. You know what I mean? Not quite sure how to get around that, other than to limit the rows of stitches, as much as the batting allows.

Funny story about my grandma’s quilt: when she passed away, my mom offered it to me. It’s a great quilt and I thought perhaps she’d made it herself. I went home: “Look Chris! I have my Nana’s homemade quilt!!” .  I kept up thinking that right up until I went to wash it and noticed a tag by the maker herself himself: L. L. Bean.

Right. Not homemade.




This has been a fun little sewing project and I’m looking forward to attempting Ben’s quilt. I’m going to use a hodgepodge of saved-up material so hopefully I won’t have to buy much besides the batting and backing fabric. Be sure to check out my friend Amanda’s Newbie Quilt-Along tutorial - I found it to be exceptionally helpful when looking for supplies and learning quilting techniques.

xo,

Sonja