It’s been a little silent here due to some travel and family stuff. But here’s something I did manage to get done between trips. A quilt and tote bag that I recently finished as a gift for my cousin for her new little boy. I often find quilts to be a nice palate cleanser since they don’t require muslins, finicky fabrics or closures. Just some nice meditative straight stitching on cotton.
The quilt was my own design using a packet of Michael Miller Cotton Couture charm squares that I received as part of my goodie bag from my guild’s virtual retreat last year. Most of my stash is more traditionally female oriented (pink hearts, flowers, etc) so sometimes it’s a bit harder for me to come up with stuff for the boys. However, this collection of colors worked great for a nice gender neutral quilt.
For the border I used some Cotton Couture in Fog that I have on a bolt. I picked it up back in the day from when Massdrop used to have quilting goodies. Alas, they no longer do. But I love having bolts of the basics (black, gray, white). It makes putting together a quilt on the fly like this so much easier since I don’t have to run out to the store. The batting was also from my stash. Since it was a baby quilt, I could use the cutoffs from other quilts. I actually doubled up the batting on this one just to make it a bit more plush for the little fella.
I quilted it using Aurifil Dove by doing designs from Jacquie Gering’s book WALK. Lots of great stuff in that book. I just picked up her second book, WALK 2.0, as I’ve gotten so much out of the first. Since the pandemic prevented me from getting to the place where I normally rent a longarm, I’ve been exploring my walking foot and I really like it. For some of the more angular designs it’s great and I’ve been having fun exploring that style. I don’t have the skill to do such straight lines on the longarm so this gives me the capacity to do so. I’m really pleased how this one turned out with some creative shapes and lines. The hatching on the borders is actually a continuation of the inner angular orange peels which meant no buried threads!
I used some gray and white bias stripe for the binding. It’s a little hard to see in this photo, but I assure you it is striped. Love a striped binding, bias or otherwise. Turns out I had enough to use for the tote as well which made me happy since it made the two even more coordinated.
The nursery has a Winnie the Pooh theme so I got this cute non-directional print for the backing. It’s a little retro so it actually ties in nicely with some of the same muted colors. Since it had to be ordered by the yard, I had enough left over to make a coordinating tote bag.
With the extra bias stripe fabric which I used for the top section, this turned out pretty nicely. I quilted the bottom part of the outside which both gave it more structure as well as a soft, warm feeling. The top section and handles are interfaced with SF101 for extra stability as well. The straps are held both in the seam between the top and bottom section as well as stitched to the top section for extra strength. The Aurifil Dove continued to perform well, providing some light contrast on the bottom part quilting and blending nicely on the top.
The bag is self lined because I had plenty of this fabric. I have very little left now which is great since I’m really trying to work down my stash of fabric (and yet it continues to grow . . . mysterious . . . ).
And that’s about it. It’s been sent off, maybe a little late, but not nearly as late as some of my baby quilts which are half made for kids that are already off to pre-school. Hopefully their parents understand (they know who they are). >_< And hopefully I can catch up soon!
