So, I know a TON of pregnant women in my life right now.
This quilt is for a friend that I made when I first moved out here.
She is having a baby girl (obviously, by the post title).
I messaged her with options and this is what we liked the best.
Final color choices:
(you don't even WANT to know how many changes I made during the day)
I decided for fun to lay the fabrics out after I cut them to get an idea how this quilt is going to look:
And then this is half the quilt laid out on the table- NOT SEWN YET.
Thankfully, this pattern was a free download so I didn't have to do much to figure it out (although the original pattern's size would've been a finished 48.5" x 60.5" and I cut mine down making it a final size of 38.5"x 50.5"). All I did to make it the size I wanted was took 1" off each side measurement and presto! You can go to this website for the directions for how to put it together:
Pretty straight forward and REALLY fast to put together. It only took me 3 hours (with a lot of interruptions) to piece this together to get the final product of this:
*Side note if you want to make this quilt*: This particular company that does these patterns has you cut the pieces slightly larger than you need so every time I put two pieces together and then built on it, I had to trim the excess off. It only starts as a little but then by the last piece needs trimming, you're looking at some pieces that make you sad that got wasted.
So, you have to look at it as 4 blocks and two borders. Here's how the process looked-
One "block" done:
Two "blocks" done and sewn together:
All 4 "blocks" done and sewn together:
Pretty fast, right? I did keep the original picture out so I could double check my work as I pieced the blocks together. I decided that for the quilting, I would do a cool flower stippling. Here's a picture of the stencil (I got from JoAnn's):
I think this looks pretty awesome and this was a great quilt to try this on.
For the backing, I decided to keep it similar to the last quilt back (see my previous post) where it had 3 colors blocked. I put this together with some quick advice:
And here it is all basted together:
I had to make sure that the light grey seam and the middle seam didn't line up (that's a big NO-NO in backing and quilting). So, the light grey is about 1/2" above the middle of the quilt. So close….
After basting this bad boy together, I went ahead and started tracing the stencil. I tried out using washable markers (in the kids' art section of the store) because the two colors I have in markers for quilting (blue and purple) wouldn't show up very well on the DARK border and dark middle colors. My mother (in all her wisdom) told me that yellow (and I found orange as well) show up fairly well (or rather, well enough to see under a light when quilting). Once it was all stenciled up, it was fairly easy to quilt (I had to go REALLY SLOW when I was on the dark colors to try to see the marker).
Back partly done:
Another view of the back:
Front view, focused on a flower:
I decided (with much help) to use green for the binding- we really liked how it pulled from the green flower on the outer border and that the pattern on it wasn't competing with the other colors or patterns.
Being auditioned (again, you don't want to know how many colors we went through to get this):
(See why I don't take front shots until after it's been washed- I can totally see the orange marker...)
So, I then stuck it in the washer.
Here is the color catcher after the wash :
It was fun explaining to Penny why it turned orange.
And best of all, ALL THE MARKER CAME OUT
*after 2 washes- there was a little in a couple places but the second wash took it all out*!!
(*It was my first time using the washable markers that weren't the quilting markers*)
Front:
Back:
Closer look at the back:
Front folded over:
Folded over again:
All folded up:
I'm delivering this quilt by Sunday to the mother-to-be.
I hope everyone is able to zoom in on this quilting- it was fun to try something new.
