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.

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 Quilt

 

I finished the baby quilt.  It is bright and yellow and I really like it.

 

What I don't like is that the clear polyester thread leaves VERY slightly scratchy bits where they are cut short.  It makes for a great quilting thread, as you don't have to change colors all the time, but it tangles FREQUENTLY  All the poky bits were a pain. 

 

I sat down with some cuticle scissors, because sewing scissors did not cut close enough to the fabric.  I brushed my hand over every stitch on both sides of the quilt, cutting as I felt little pokes.  I sure hope I got them all, because I want the new baby to adore this quilt. 

 

The satin binding is silky smooth and I picture this baby rubbing her fingers up and down the edges, like my kids did with their blankets.

 

I am loving my new basket making, so I made a wee basket out of the yellow scraps to go with the quilt.  Small babyish things can be placed in there. 

 

Maybe it will have a spot on the changing table.  I didn't put any embellishments on it is case they are pulled off and consumed by a small baby.  No choking hazards for THIS baby!

 

I finished the quilt, so where is the baby?  Guess Vanessa is still making that gift for ME!

Big Girl Quilt

I started a quilt before the corona virus lockdown.  I'm grateful I had the fabric and a project to occupy myself.  But I have also lost interest in keeping up with my blog.  So I'm forcing myself to write about my most recent quilt.

I made a baby quilt for my older granddaughter.  It was a Rubber Duck Quilt with different rubber ducks on it. It was a quilt for a young child. But now Rachel is 4 and therefore a big girl!  I had the urge to make another quilt and I had made on for all of my grandchildren, so I thought a big girl quilt would be fun.

I found a few designs I thought would be fun and I had a FaceTime visit with my granddaughter so she could pick one out.  I thought she might enjoy having a connection to the quilt I made for her.  She chose one that had a bunch of dresses embellished with cute details.

   

AFTER we decided on the quilt I discovered that the dress pattern was on pre-printed fabric.  And the fabric was discontinued.  This meant there was no template to make the basic dress shape.  I took a lot of pictures of the pattern up close and spent a long time printing it out and then playing around with the size and shape on cardstock until I had the shape that I thought would work.

   

I cut it out and used it as a template to cut out dress shapes in different fabrics with small details. I used Steam A Seam fusible web to fuse the dress shape onto a plain square of white fabric.

   

Then I embedded each one with bits of lace or ribbon to make cute little dresses.

   

I sewed several different apron styles similar to the ones in the inspiration quilt.  There were no instructions, so I had to wing it, but I like the end results.

   

    

I made and embellished 15 different dresses.  I really like the way they turned out. Next I sewed a border of dotted yellow, blue or purple on each dress square.

   

I added a pink sashing and now I am ready to add the border.

   

 The cat likes to "help"

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!

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!

  

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.