TGIFF! It’s time for Baby!!!

Well, for a baby quilt! Baby won’t be here until June, but her quilt is ready to receive her. OH, not MY baby, but my niece’s expectant little one. We can’t wait to meet her. Considering who her parents are, she is sure to be a darling.

Months ago we had a Quilter’s Day Out at Quilts Plus, back when we were free to roam the country. I hadn’t planned to buy fabrics for a baby quilt, but as I looked around the shop I found a simple pattern that I knew would be a great backdrop for beautiful fabrics. So I grabbed the pattern. Then, as I wandered the shelves, I happened upon a neat fabric, but in pinks, yellows, and orange, what to do with it? It screamed baby quilt!! And I needed one for an April shower, so Austin Baby was born.

My guild friends and the shop owner helped yay/nay my fabric choices until we had a great palette assembled. All I had to do was decide how to reduce the size to a more usable baby quilt and place the fabrics. EQ8 to the rescue!

The piecing was quick and easy and in time I had a completed top! But you know what happens next for me. HOW DO I QUILT IT!!! But this time I really didn’t have an issue, I knew where my starting point would be. WALK. No, not walk away from the quilting, WALK the quilting! And Jacquie Gering was a great help in this endeavor. I pursued the pages and identified the motifs I wanted to use and then planned where to insert them into the color bars. A few changes were made on the fly, but in the end I was thrilled with the choices I made. Wanna see them?

 This one is actually my favorite of the bunch! But they all were fun, even if a few were tricky to get the spacing correct. I had wanted to do an orange peel motif, but my curves were not working with the size I had made them, so I scraped it for a more linear design. The most difficult thing was finding starting and stopping points to try and reduce the cut threads within each bar. There’s a bit of traveling along the seam lines to help with that.

For the sashing I just went with 1/4″ quilting along the seam line. And then it sat, for I was not sure just what to do for the border. But one night a lightbulb went off over my head and I quickly started marking the lines. Random blocks were made with connecting lines to travel around the four borders. What fun! An afternoon of stitching was all it took to get the border done and binding on, with the next morning spent tacking the binding down by hand.

And now the Princess can make her appearance! Her quilt awaits.

And just because I had some small pieces to use up, a bonus Zippered Pouch!

 

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