This past week my niece turned one year old, so I thought it would be fun to review the design process of making her baby quilt!
As soon as I found out she was on her way, I bought a couple charm packs at Cotton Cabin quilt shop while I was on a quilting retreat in Iowa.
I got some books from the library for inspiration, but nothing really appealed to me, so I sketched out some ideas.
The charm packs had a mix of black and white and pastel tones, so I settled on a simple striped blanket with a rainbow gradient. And I wanted to incorporate some of the black and white charms into a secondary pattern within the colored rows.
I envisioned a black and white squiggle border and even bought some fabric, but once I brought it home, I didn’t like the contrast of the larger squiggles with the smaller patterns on the charms.
Then came the fun part of mocking up the quilt! I tried really hard to make the black and white charms work in the main design, but it just wasn’t popping as much as I wanted.
So I ended up making each colored row a single tone, but I alternated with lighter and darker charms. For the border, I decided to use the leftover charms - I had a bunch! and I put them in a fairly random order that I thought looked good against the main pattern. The charms didn’t fit into an exact border, so I got a little creative and cut up some of the black and white charms to create the corners and add the extra inches I needed to make everything fit.
For the back, I wanted a single piece of fabric to be a contrast to the patchwork front. After buying the charm packs, my partner and his mom went to India, so I sent them with some fabric samples and instructions to go shopping. He came back with the fabric below and I loved it! The fabric is incredibly soft and the pattern colors go nicely with front, but it’s not an exact match. I like that each side is unique so it’s almost like two quilts in one!
Over the winter I made the quilt sandwich and used the walking foot on my home machine to quilt it. I didn’t want the quilting lines to be too dense, so I just followed the seams of the patchwork for a more lofty effect.
I had a mustard yellow fabric that matched the back flowers and coordinated with the front, so I used that as the binding.
I sewed the binding edge to the back by hand so it is invisible and the quilt can be truly reversible.
It was such a joy to design, source the fabric, and create this quilt for my niece. I got so much satisfaction just from the creative process of making it, so now seeing her play on it just gives me bonus happiness!
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🧶 What am I making now?
I am steadily making progress on my orange knit blouse. I try to do a little bit every morning and that’s been a really nice way to start my day before jumping into work.
Sunday morning I woke up motivated to work on the quilt for my bed, so I chalked out the lines on the top and was able to quilt everything I planned. I figured working the top and bottom in quadrants would be the most efficient way, so I have three sections left. Then just the orange sections on the sides need to be quilted and this beast will be done!
Have you made a gift quilt before? Let us know in the comments or reply to this email!
Cam you come up here and put the backing on my latest? 🤪 I hate backing quilts!
Your baby quilt design and the finished object is gorgeous :) I made a cot quilt for a dear friend's first baby that had a bear theme. Each corner had appliqued bear paw prints. I loved making it. That was a loooong time ago! :)