A Quilt for Baby

I started one of my projects for this year! It is a baby quilt for my friends who are newly pregnant. They're "fashionable" people so I chose some fabric in today's modern colors. Brown, aqua, teal, and olive green. I bought the fabric last weekend when a friend and I took a little road trip to Lawrence to a cool fabric shop. They're on the web!

I didn't want to do anything to fancy because I wanted to showcase the fabrics. I had in mind doing a strip piece quilt with wide strips in the 4-6" range surrounded by a single border. I never found fabrics that would work in that layout, so I ended up with simple strips of variable widths. The widths showcase the fabric patterns. Then I arranged them in a pleasing way and sewed them together. The top was done in less than 3 hours! I felt so accomplished!

Usually I do complicated piecing. For instance, the quilt I'm working on for my bed (queen size) consists of Log Cabin blocks with 13 pieces each. I need 80 blocks. I've done 42 so far. It's taking a while....

Now I need to figure out what kind of backing and binding I would like - I'm thinking of finding a cutesy 30s reproduction print with a children's motif, probably in browns. I could find another modern print, or I could go with a solid. The binding would be nice in dark teal. The quilting will be repeated patterns along each strip, I think. Maybe loop-de-loops in vertical stripes. I want to choose a quilting pattern that matches the "feel" of the quilt.

I have the sewing bug. That is, I am energized and interested in working on my projects. It ebbs and flows.... Today, I worked on a pillow project a good friend gave me. Came out cute - not my colors, but what the heck. It was fun.

I think I'll try my sewing machines "hand quilting stitch" on this project, see how it turns out.