Baby Quilt 2019

So I have been struggling with this quilt since last July, as to how to arrange it, what block to use with, what border should I do, and how will I quilt it????? I had 5 – 7 different colors I wanted to use to really make the prints pop against the white.  There were pop of flowers throughout the panel, which is why I bought two for the fussy cuts. I really wanted to make this unusual, and I try on all my quilts to make them special.  

I don’t like “baby” quilts.  They aren’t babies very long and I want my babies to hold on to this quilt until they have families of their own.  When it is too small for their bed, they can snuggle up on the couch and watch a funny movie. They can hold on tight when they are scared or sad.  Not just for babies, but for my babies.  I thought this panel was beautiful,  I really wanted this to be special, and timeless.

I don’t know how it works with everyone else but my inspiration comes at the oddest times.  I am in my bedroom taking care of clothes, I look up and see the very first quilt project that I did.  It was for a class that I took to learn to quilt and there are several different blocks to teach us how to do them.  I look at the “Open barn door” quilt block… wow, it was in front of me the whole time.  I will have to make it a 12” block instead of 9” so the flower will fit in the middle,but now problem.  I will make each block a different color.  How will I arrange it?  I will try to make the “floating effect”.  The penguin block is 15” x 10”, the Fox block is 15” x 11, and the tiny little bear block I made 10” x 10”.  Jon helped me with some to the math.  After I got my 3 rows figured out, I had a 6” gap above (left) and below (right) of my penguin.  That is where I wanted to put the color blocks with all 5 of my colors, but of course it is an odd number and fractions are involved.  So I yell for my husband of course….  The border took some thought as well.  I really wanted to do ½ squares, I just didn’t know what.  I had been looking a lot on Pinterest and Instagram and never realized all the different designs that could be created with just ½ squares.  I am not sure why I decided on this border except that I thought it would look the best.  I used the rest of the navy I had left from Mom’s quilt to finish the backing (just enough) with a bright green label that has the date she was born.  I did not get a pic of that…too anxious to see the babies to worry about that I guess.

I got it finished!!  Had to sew the binding on in the car on the way to Georgia but it got done!!  I was so excited to wrap her up in it.  It just happened that she was still awake when we got there that I got to do just that.  She fell right to sleep all bundled up looking as sweet as she always does.  This is all the reward I need for the long hours and bloody fingers. I plan on making her a cross stitch fox to along with this theme.  My daughter bought her an adorable black and white rug that has a curled up fox on it.  I can’t wait to see her room all decked out in foxes.

I laid the quilt over their deck fence so I could get the morning light for a picture, she thought that it was pretty too.