A Baby Quilt for Sarah

Wow, it's been a long time since I've posted! I've finished three quilts in that time, and a few sewing projects, but haven't done much in the way of embroidery, sadly.

Over the summer, I made a baby quilt for my cousin's brand-new daughter, Sarah Catherine. I used this Simple Stripes Baby Quilt tutorial from Amy Smart, though I ended up cutting one of the main pieces a little too small and had to adjust the overall size of the quilt to compensate. Still, since it was for a baby, I figured it wouldn't make too much of a difference!

My cousin isn't a big fan of pink for girls (and neither am I, as a result of pink overkill when I was little), so I wanted to use bright colors that were girly without being too princessy. I came across the Delighted line by the Quilted Fish a while back and figured it would work well for little Miss Sarah with its red, yellow, aqua, and green palette. I rounded out my fabric choices with some similarly colored selections from Connecting Threads and Joel Dewberry's Modern Meadow aqua herringbone--a favorite of mine!

Since I am a little bit obsessive about block placement, I carefully arranged the blocks ahead of time. (Notice they fall in diagonal stripes of coordinating colors!) Per Amy's tutorial, I also rotated the blocks so the stripes are on different sides across rows and down columns. These are the sorts of puzzles that can be a headache in larger quilts, but work like a dream in smaller quilts.

Here's the finished product:

 

For the quilting, I stitches double rows of straight diagonals. (I drew diagonal lines on the fabric with a water-soluble marker and stitched 3/8 inch on either side of the lines.) I really liked the criss-cross effect it made, and were it not so time consuming, I might stitch double lines all the time!

The binding is a red/pink herringbone from The Quilted Fish's more recent Apple of My Eye line. I love how it turned out. The backing was a great bargain I ordered from Connecting Threads. (I think it was about $3 a yard!) It's not a perfect match with the larger prints on the front of the quilt, but the colors go nicely and I like the happy flowers. (Though I hadn't initially intended to, I ended up using some of this print on the front, too.)

And, of course I had to embroider a little note to Sarah! I used red floss on a red print, so it wouldn't stand out too much.

(If you want to know a secret, the heart actually covers up a little mistake. See, I sometimes use my ironing board as a surface for hot gluing other projects, and a bit of glue was hanging out on the board when I was pressing the quilt top. I didn't realize it had stuck to the fabric until it was too late to get it off, so I covered the small splotch with embroidery. Lesson learned -- do not glue where you iron! Don't tell Sarah!)

The quilt was ready just in time for my first encounter with Sarah, when she was just 5 days old. (Today, she is officially 5 months old and is as cute as a button!) The quilt seemed to go over well, and I hope it's something she can enjoy when as she grows. It was also nice to make something for a baby girl! Our family consists of mostly guys, so the females really have to stick together.

Next time, I'll show you Drea's housewarming/birthday quilt, which was a long time in the works!