It isn’t true that I only write about ancestors. Every now and then I have a chance to write about descendants and this is one of those times. We are fortunate enough to add another new branch to this tree and welcome a sweet little girl into the family fold.
Since the mister is recently retired (from retail), we were thrilled to spend our first Thanksgiving away from our home and with family in their home. Our thrills are cheap, but they are many and it makes things fun. The mister’s daughter was also pregnant and it was a perfect time to have a baby shower. I set about making a quilt for my soon to be granddaughter….I ended up making three! It was like popcorn, I just couldn’t get enough.
I knew that the preferred colors were pink and gray, in soft tones. Next, I perused the web for a bit of inspiration and finally I drug the mister along to the quilt store to help with fabric choices. He really has a good eye and most of the time I go with what he picks. I also had a stash of other fabrics that just called out to me to be stitched up into a more modern baby quilt. So, here we go!
These are a few of the gray and pink choices. For this particular quilt I snowballed opposite corners of squares cut from a variety of fabrics.
This particular quilt went together fairly quickly and the most difficult thing was getting the layout the way I wanted it. I have learned that rearranging and looking at the layout isn’t good enough. Take a photo with your phone and view it on there. I don’t know why, but I never fail to find a glaring issue on the phone photo that I just can’t seem to see in real life. Forest for the trees?
It doesn’t have to be pretty shot (fine example of ugly above) but it will be effective. I promise. Since these were all quilts for a baby, they are small and worked up really quickly.
Here it is all quilted, bound and ready to go. I didn’t exactly take premium photos of any of these creations because I hadn’t really planned on blogging about them. Suffer with me, won’t you? The mister originally chose the binding fabric for another quilt but I didn’t agree (it happens, move along). I am really happy with this and the haut batik backing that the mister picked out.
The next pattern is kind of a riff on the first quilt. I snowballed lots of corners that week and let’s just leave it at that! I really liked the selection and variation of “grunge” fabrics and needed something fun to do all of that snowballing with. The mister comes through again! He picked a super fun kitty print that added some interest but didn’t detract from the layout or the main fabrics. Again, using squares but this time with smaller corner squares for the snowballs, I created a nice layout.
As you can see, this is a “test drive” version. This particular pattern is called Hugs and Kisses and I think that you can see why.
I used a Frixxon pen to mark the centers of each square and then using a template I drew out a square within a square and quilted those. You can see the cute kitty fabric here. Meow!
This was the original backing and binding on this quilt….I just couldn’t do the binding and ended up with something different, however I did love the backing and I think it turned out great. What a cool print!
Really muted binding allows the eye to rest. Super bright and happy colors will engage baby!
Love this one!
Next I decided to do a slightly more traditional style with a single block quilt that was nearly 30″ square. Perfect for a wee one and oh so cute.
While a bit difficult to see, I have again used the “grunge” pink for the main color and a sweet pale yellow and pale pink rabbit print for the contrasting fabric.
A soft yellow backing fabric and an all over meander stitch finish off this project.
Now for my favorite. Yes, I did one more. The plan was for three and then I did one for me!
Although not true to the pink/gray theme, I felt that I just had to stitch this one up for the impending bundle of joy. I had a charm pack of Soho by Quilting Treasures and it just spoke to me…..called my name, it did. I thought I would try to design a square around a square and see if it would work. (Again, I apologize for the not ready for prime time photos)
I LOVE the modern feel of the fabric and the design, plus the final touch of the straight line stitching.
Because I wanted to make it really special, I pieced the back.
And to really make things pop, I did an oversized binding on the front with a contrasting flange. But I feel like I totally knocked this one out of the park. I really hated to bundle it up and send it on to its new home. But the big day came and we attended a lovely baby shower along with LOTS of other people. I wrapped up my homemade gifts and the momma-to-be was thrilled.
Welcome baby! We are so happy to add you to our tree and hopefully we will get to meet you soon.
