Yellow Brick Road to Oklahoma Baby Quilt

Ye olde' blog may have been a bit quiet, but there's been a whole lot of sewing going on!

A recent addition of a sweet baby girl to the family prompted the making of a couple of things so we'll begin with the quilt.

The family lives in Oklahoma, so the historic Road to Oklahoma quilt block seemed perfect.   I've made this block before and it's a fun block to not only make, but see the visuals as it begins to come together.

As the quilt began to take shape..... as the quilt's story began to unfold..... it became clear this was no ordinary Road to Oklahoma.... it would be the Yellow Brick Road to Oklahoma.  Do you see 'Oz' there in the middle?  I used different fabrics in those half square triangles with white in the center for embroidering birth info.  This is a photo below of the quilt top.... before sandwiching and quilting.  I decided to embroider the baby's name, birthdate and that I loved her in that center area using the fonts on my Bernina.  It's not the prettiest embroidery, but I'm glad to have that capability.  I did the embroidery before sandwiching everything together as I did not want the backside of the embroidery to show through on the quilt's finished back.

You can see a little of the embroidery here, below, though for privacy purposes I've pretty much blocked it out!  Sorry!  Anyway, this is how I set the quilt up for quilting after all was sandwiched together.  This time I wanted my quilting lines to go diagonally.

Love, love, love the gently curving elongated stitch I used on this quilt.  Easy to line up with each square's corners and I didn't stress about exactness as the curves are very forgiving.

Took a quick photo of the settings of my machine to show you how I set this stitch up and Oops!  forgot to show the actual stitch.....

 .....but found an old photograph for the Settings for the Baby Boy 'Bugs' Quilt that are quite similar.  Looks like I just shortened the zigzag width for this quilt.

Finished quilt measured a little less than 36" x 36" as it shrunk considerably after washing and drying.  I always wash and dry my quilts before gifting because not only does it bring out all the quilting goodness, but I want to catch any problems before giving away.

Wanting soft pink, whites and golden yellow, my stash did not produce enough scraps so all the golden yellow, whites and most of the pinks are the Waverly fabric brand from Wal-Mart.  This was my first time using this brand of 100% cotton and have to say it turned out quite nice.

The back was a bit of Classic Pooh I picked up at a local textile outlet store and I loved it! 

The baby's sweet mother had picked out Classic Pooh for the nursery, and even though this is not what she had chosen, thought it might go well with the whole Pooh theme.

And tried a new-technique-to-me by self-binding this quilt.  Completely by accident, as I was beginning to trim the backing back to bias tape bind the quilt, I realized I had prepped enough of a hang-over to self-bound.  A quick Google search of 'how-to' and within minutes it was done.

Love it!  So, so easy and you don't have to worry about catching the back of the bias-tape binding on the back with your stitching or taking f-o-r-e-v-e-r to set all that up.

Item #2 was a Baby Blanket.  I'd picked up this fun flannel print of ice-skating polar bears because the baby's father is a big hockey player.  My sweet cousin led me in the direction of Missouri Star Quilting Company's video of self-bound baby blanket using minky fabric..... though mine is a pure white fuzzy furry-ish fleece again from WalMart.  Living in a small, rural town I very much appreciate that my local Wal-Mart has a fabric department!!  And yes, I am on first-name basis with the lady who runs the fabric department.  She is oh-so-nice and we always visit a little while having fabric cut.  Back to the blanket construction..... let me warn you this is a pain to get everything all lined up nice and neat.  My furry fleece wanted to move and slink all over the place.  The instructions were easy to follow..... it was more my slinky fabric that was the problem.  There is where the perfectionist me had to step back and say it was 'good enough'.

Thought it'd be easier to embed the video I used here because Jenny with Missouri Star Quilt Co. has actually done 2 different versions of a self-binding baby blanket and the one I used was her second, updated one.  I love her videos!!!

So the baby now has ice-skating polar bears along with the Yellow Brick Road to Oklahoma.  Hope they might keep her warm and know that her family members in South Carolina love her.

Happy Sewing All!  :)