Baby Blanket

I pieced together a quick baby blanket over the last couple of weekends for Clizziare, my collage friend who now has one month to go before birth day! This is Amy Butler Midwest Modern fabric I'd been saving and not sure what to do with. I had two fat quarters (center and around the center), and a yard of the big boarder and a yard of polka dots for the back and little corners. I didn't want to cut up the big pattern of the flowers so I made that my focus, and put in two boarders and called it a quilt! The backing is the same little dots you see in the small squares around the first boarder. I fussy cut the outside boarder to keep the lines of pink consistent. I machine stitched the binding, I uhh, wanted it to hold up to frequent washings (or, I'm just lazy!)

I practiced my free motion by tracing the large flowers in a matching pink, and did stitch in the ditch for each boarder. I think some wide spaced (maybe 3 inches) horizontal lines along the outside would have been nice, but I didn't think of it until I was wrapping this for a baby shower on Saturday. The free motion takes some practice, I tried area stores to buy a $29 sew slip or supreme slider to make the fabric move nicely so you can control your work, but I no one had them and half thought I was crazy! After my husband raised his eyebrows at the idea of buying 'quilting gloves,' I made due with some 99 cent plastic kitchen gloves, and it gave me the traction I needed.

I struggled with making such a simple quilt with such quality fabric (read: expensive) but in the end, a simple well made quilt can show off a nice fabric and you don't need to complicate things. And, if halfway through the process it becomes an okay-made quilt to an "at least it will keep the baby warm" made quilt. That's okay, too!

You can see my plum tree is in full bloom, expect plums at least a month earlier than usual.