I recently took a little break from garment sewing to make a couple of baby quilts that I was very behind on for my cousins that recently had baby boys. Between fashion shows and designing and collaborations and pattern testing and making looks for various events, I have been very busy over the last year. To be honest, it was a nice palate cleanser to do something that didn’t involve fitting.
The first quilt uses the Animalia line by Art Gallery fabrics. I asked the mama what her nursery theme was and she said woodland with a palette of navy, mustard, dusty pink, sage green, pale blue and rust. This line was pretty much those colors so it was perfect. Plus the prints are so adorable — bears on bikes, frogs, pugs, lambs in buttondowns — but actually done in a way that the kiddo can grow up with it. Frankly, I liked the prints so much and was so entertained by them that if my cousin hadn’t liked this one, I would have been happy to keep it myself! But she did 🙂
The pattern is my own. I picked up a fat quarter bundle from Hawthorne Supply Co. as well as 2 yards of the coordinating navy flannel for the backing. The recipients live in upstate New York so making it cozy was warranted.
I cut each fat quarter into 4.5″x7″ blocks. I was able to get 9 out of each. I had originally planned to do the cuts to get 10 5″x8.5″ pieces by putting the 8.5″ sides parallel with the short side of the fat quarters. Unfortunately when I was doing that calculation, I didn’t realize the direction of the prints was across the long side of the fat quarter. So I switched it around and was able to get 3 4.5″ strips that I cut into 3 pieces each.
When laying them out, I offset each one by 1.5″. I chose 1.5″ because it allowed me to get all the way across the quilt with the 9 pieces with a little extra for buffer. The offset also made the piecing easier because I didn’t need to line up seams although it did require marking 1.5″ on each block with water soluble pen. This quilt also took a little longer to put together because I couldn’t strip piece it like I normally would. I had to go line by line to make sure I used only as many pieces on each strip as I needed since I didn’t have any extra.
For the quilting I did simple straight lines on my Bernina with the walking foot. I love it. It’s simple, but it fits the design and style and keeps the quilt floppy and snuggly. Sometimes simpler really is best.
The binding is some gray and white stripes that I already had in my stash that happened to match. I thought about piecing together some of the scraps from the fat quarter, but I was worried it would be too much with the print on the front and I do love a good striped binding.
I actually got to give this one to both mama and baby in person at Thanksgiving. It’s such a treat to give a quilt in person and see the reaction since I live far from most of my family so it was a gift to me, too!
