A Paper Pieced Baby Quilt

It all begann in June last year:

Above you can see Lynne’s Paper Piecing Class at Fat Quarterly Sewing Retreat in London. I was terrified as I had never tried Paper Piecing before. But Lynne explained everything so thoroughly and perfectly that I left the class with 3 finished blocks.

They were meant to be made into a cussion but somehow that never appealed to me. So they sat in my U.F.O. pile for 9 months. One day I saw this quilt on pinterest and I knew what I wanted to make. A baby quilt.

And I wanted to try some new Free Motion Quilting. I had seen this tutorial and wanted to give it a try ever since. The design is called Dogwood. After basting the quilt sandwich I drew a grid on the quilt top and without any practise I started to quilt.

I will not conceal that there are some petals that are less than imperfect but (to my own surprise) I don’t care a bit.

In the photo above you can see the grid and how I quilted one flower per square. Around the paper pieced blocks I have sewn some free motion straight lines because the grid didn’t fit around the blocks.

And here’s a shot of the finished quilt after washing:

I had some Remix stripes in my stash that match the colours of the blocks very well and I even had a matchy-matchy-dotty-flannel for the backing:

I attached the binding with my sewing machine – this time using a simple straight stitch.

Now let’s face the two things that really annoy me.
First. Bleeding. There’s one green fabric that bleeded into the white fabric.
See below in the block at the right. Any suggestions how to fix that are welcome. That never happened before )o:

Second. Bearding. There are many many fibres that escaped through the top fabrics AND the backing. That never happened either.

What frustrates me most about this circumstance is that the piece of batting I used for this quilt was a leftover. And I’m not sure were it came from, what brand it is nor how I used the main piece of that batting. There’s another quilt top rolled in a piece of batting waiting to be finished – and I fear it might be the same sort of batting. Grrr.

All that being said, I still love that little quilt.

It was intended to be a gift for our friends who are expecting a second baby girl soon – do you think I can still give it away with this heavy bearding? I fear that the baby will constantly be eating cotton fibres. What do you think?!

Happy quilting!
Christine

Quilt Cars 'n Dots

I finished this Babyquilt today...

When I started out with these fabrics (Ann Kelle and some dots from my local fabric store with no credits on the selvages), I  just wanted to make a patchwork quilt. No sashing, no borders. But IMO it looked too busy.

I sliced some of the dotty squares and framed them wonkily in white.

Huh. Still not happy.

Next I decided to give it a little more structure. I opted for regular layout instead of random. Better now.

I added a pieced backing... with leftover squares from the top. (I will one day do this one again - and use it as a top... like it veeeeeeeeeeery much...)

And free motion quilted some squares and rectangles...

Today, I added a srappy binding (with leftovers from the top). I attached the 2,5" binding to the front, folded it over to the back and used a decorative (circle) stitch of my sewing machine to finish the binding (stitching from the front side). 

What I liked best about making this quilt is that I made parts of it "open air": The first warm days at the beginning of May were turned into an "Ironing Outdoors Event"...

 ...and a really hot Whitsun made me take outdoors my sewing machine for the first time ever to FMQ on the porch. I actually finished FMQ on two quilts that day :o) 

Usually I don't even dare to sew when the kids are home. But give them some water to play with in the garden and they are happy and let me have my way all day long :o))) Yayyy!

And as this one didn't turn out the way I had planned it (all Patchwork), I guess I will have to re-add a "real Patchwork Quilt" to my to do list.

Happy Sewing everyone!

Christine