Elephant Baby Quilt

 I need to make a baby quilt for our granddaughter, Cecilia. I found a cute pattern with elephants and flower pots on Etsy. The pattern was for a full size quilt. I want a baby quilt so I decided to only use a few of the elephants and flower pots. But the flower pot squares were too small to make the quilt work. 

   

I re-sized the flower pot squares making them the same size as the elephant squares.  Then I had to fill the bare spots in them.  

I have a few fabrics from other projects with cute bugs. 

I have cartoon bugs and some bees, ladybugs, and dragonflies. I added these to the squares. I even added a few that escaped from the squares and flew around the border fabric.

When I started quilting I realized I should have kept more fabric around the tiny bugs to make for easier quilting. I have no idea how long they will last with a crawling baby and many washes.  But the bigger, cartoon bugs should last.

    

The back of the quilt is a flannel with a lot of cute elephants.  I prefer flannel on quilt backs if I can find one I like. It makes them feel cozier.

    

I like the quilt and hope Cecilia does, too.

Bug Quilt

I have been working on a new quilt.  I found the fabric while hunting for boat themed fabric for our newest granddaughter.  She was just born this week and has her boating quilt waiting for her.

 

In the meantime, I found some cartoon bug fabric that I couldn't resist.  I decided to buy it and make a quilt for a future baby.

  

Well, I finished it.  I really like it. All I need now is that future baby.

Waiting patiently.

More Baby Quilt 2

I finished all the boat squares on the sailboat quilt I am making for our second grandchild.  The next step is sewing all the sashing between the 8 boat squares and the one whale square that I placed in the center of the quilt.

  

I like the way it is turning out.

  

After the top was sewn, I made a "sandwich"  of the backing fabric and the batting in between the two.  The cat was quite curious about the whole process.  And not in a good way.

  

I particularly like the way it is coming together so quickly.  I may ONLY do baby quilts from here on out.

  

For the first time, I decided to use free hand quilting on the whole project.

  

I had to be careful to avoid stitching the prairie points, that are supposed to be only attached at the base, to the body of the quilt.

I also chose to stitch very carefully around the boats ( and the whale) to emphasize them.

  

When the whole thing was quilted, I trimmed the edges.

  


And then I started to attach the satin binding.  I chose satin because babies love to play with the satin binding of their blankets!

I love the backing of the quilt. An oven themed quilt!

  

One more quilt finished.  I have two more I want to do!

  

Baby Quilt 2

We recently heard that our son and daughter-in-law will be expecting our second grandchild.  This puts them several lengths ahead in the favorite child race! Our daughters don't seem interested in this important competition.  We still love them very much.

I made a Rubber Ducky Quilt for our first grandchild. You can see it here.   Now that we are getting a new baby, I have to make a new quilt.  You can't just make one for one grand baby and then not make one for the other!!!

I found a pattern I liked in a quilt book from the library.  I went looking for the fabric to reproduce it. That's when I discovered that fabric has an expiration date. They make new fabric every year and then discontinue the old.  So I couldn't reproduce the exact quilt.

  

The main reason I liked the quilt in the book, was the sailboats. I used to live on a sailboat and my son built a sailboat, so I looked for other fabric with sailboats. I didn't want realistic sailboats, but simple, almost cartoon sailboats.  I think I found them with this fabric.

  

In addition to sailboats, it has tugboats and a whale.  I liked all of them and decided to showcase them in the middle of the squares.  I had to fussy cut out the boats and the whale and start building the squares.

  

I have never used prairie points on a quilt.  I kept rechecking the instructions to see where I sewed them flat to the quilt.  I finally looked them up on the internet.  (How did we learn stuff before Google?).

  

It seems prairie points are triangles connected to the quilt along the base of the triangle with the rest of it is unattached. This seems like a cool thing for baby fingers to play with.  I love it and didn't even know I was choosing a cool thing for babies!

  

Next I sew the sashing.

  

Rubber Ducky

I have decided baby quilts are the way to go.  Maybe they don't provide instant gratification, but they certainly are faster to make than a full sized quilt.  The baby quilt I am making is coming along nicely.

 

After a lot of peeling, placing

 

and ironing, I placed all the squares and tried to arrange them so that they mix of colors and duckies looked randomly placed. 

 

This was not easy and every one I placed meant two others had to be moved.  I finally got it as close as I could to what I wanted and then started to sew. 

 

 

Next I had to put a small inset border. I found a totally cute yellow fabric with tiny black dots and I like that it is sewn in such a way as to be attached on one side only.

 

After that the last of the aqua border was cut and sewn.

 

The top is FINISHED.  Now to the sandwich making.  This is what I call getting all the pieces together for the quilting process.

 

The back of the quilt goes face down on a table.  Smooth it out and tape it in place.

 

Place the cotton batting on top and smooth that out.

 

Then the recently finished quilt top is placed and smoothed.

 

Start at the center and pin the whole "sandwich" every few inches, smoothing and flattening as you go.  Sit down when you can.  This takes awhile and it can hurt even young people with GOOD backs!

   

Cut most of the excess away, leaving an inch or two around the edges, and start to quilt.

Quilt Progress

I've been working on a baby quilt.  This one has rubber duckies all over it in different fabrics.  Once again I am going solo, without any expert help, so there are times I have to cut new squares or waste material in other ways.  I always try to buy extra so I don't have to match fabrics from one store at another.  Now that I make scrap fabric baskets, I don't mind having the left over bits and pieces of fabrics.

 

The rubber duckies are appliques, so I bought some clear plastic to cut out templates.  The only kind they had was with a grid, but that made it easier to see when then templates were on the counter.  They were pretty easy to cut.

 

I ironed some fusible interfacing on to the fabric.  On the wrong side.  You know, after you do it on the RIGHT side and say a bad word. 

 

Then I traced the duck parts on the paper and cut them out.

 

The small blue squares are placed in the corner of the light green and yellow green larger squares and then sew on the diagonal.

 

Cut off the excess and press to one side.

 

You have to peel the paper backing off the cut outs.  Place the glue side down on the squares and iron them in place to glue them down.  I ironed one duck, one wing, one beak and one eye on each square.  Try to make each one a different combination.  One set of duck parts is backwards and one of the duck tails is different.  So maybe the baby can play., "One of these things is not like the other..."  What do you mean you never watched Sesame Street? 

 

The pattern called for hand stitching the edges of the ducks parts with a blanket stitch.  I tried it and didn't like the way it looked. 

 

I also worried about little finger picking at the edges and lots of machine washing and decided that machine stitching was the way to go.  In some places I had to do one stitch, turn the fabric and do one more.  For the whole thing.  But it was still faster and better than the hand stitching and I like it. 
 
 

I need to do 18 squares for this quilt.
 

My Turn

I have made a lot of baby blankets.  But they are always for someone else.  Not my baby or Grandbaby.   I don't mind.  I like to knit and I like babies, so it is fun for me to make something and think about the baby getting my gift.

But all that has changed.  All you people wanting me to knit you something will have to wait.  I am making something for MY grandbaby. Yay!  And cue the fireworks.

 

First thing I did was go get some yarn for a baby afghan and order some quilt books from the library.

 

I started the afghan and have picked out the quilt I want to make.

 

We are waiting to know the gender so I chose a gender neutral quilt.

Nothing more universal than Rubber Duckies, Right??

 

I went to a quilt shop on a visit to NOVA ( that's Northern Virginia for the uninformed).  I bought a lot of  a lot of fat quarters in yellows, greens and blues.

 

I will fussy cut the orange for different beaks.  None of the Rubber Duckies are supposed to be the same, so I will mix and match..

The baby isn't due for months and months.  But then quilts take months and months to make.  My plan is to finish the quilt before the baby gets here. 

The afghan should be done in a month and then I will start the quilt.

Yay!