An Easy Quilt Project for a Baby Girl

What a fun project this has been!!

In January 2019 I wrote of a baby quilt that was planned for the upcoming birth of a baby girl at my church and that'd I'd be using the Lattice Baby Quilt Tutorial from designer Amy Smart.  It's always a maker's prerogative to change her mind, right?!  So instead chose to go completely free-form following the encouragement of my quilting friend, D, who helped me.

D is a quilter friend who also attends the same church, so she graciously donated much of her time, and fabrics!, to collaborate on this project together.  Oh what fun we had!!  See that cute bunny print below.... that's hers.  Along with the pretty multi-colored polka dots and stripes, among others.

She brought over her stash of pinks and soft colored quilting cottons and it was such a blast to combine our prints to make this quilt.  Most of my fabrics were the Waverly quilting cotton from WalMart.  D's were the quilting designer brands.  They went together well.

I'd already gotten a jump start on cutting out my fabrics into 5" squares, still thinking I would be making the Lattice Quilt..... but after D got here, we decided we wanted this to be a fun, no-stress easy project, so she suggested putting the 5" squares together in rows divided by 2" sashing and borders so we wouldn't have to match any seam allowances or points.  GREAT idea!!

She brought along her really cool cutting template so while I was piecing the squares together in rows, she was cutting and prepping for me.  We spent maybe 3-4 hours that afternoon and when she left, the piecing was pretty much done.  I had some Fairfield cotton batting on hand, as well as Waverly white cotton large enough for the backing, so it didn't take too long to sandwich and pin everything together.  I deliberately pinned everything on an angle because I knew I'd be doing diagonal quilt lines.

And this is the very scientific, mathematical way the beginning quilting line was determined, below!  Ha!  Seriously..... it took me longer to figure out the quilting than it did to pin everything together because nothing lines up on a diagonal.  So I took some twine and taped it from one corner to another marking with a Frixion pen (disappearing ink when ironed) after checking all would disappear okay on my fabric first.  And that was my first quilting line.  With a 'guide' line in place it was only a matter of lining up my Bernina's walking foot quilting guide bar to sew 1" lines apart.  This took f-o-r-e-v-e-r.  I'd forgotten how long a repetitive process this is.

After it took so long to complete the diagonal quilting one way..... when it was finished the thought was entertained to run an opposite quilting line throughout the entire quilt and was thrilled when D said this one directional line would be fine.  Whew!!  And she was right..... !!  As you can see below, after the quilt was washed and dried an opposite, 1" diagonal quilting line(s) would've been too much.

Now it was time to sew on the binding I'd prepared earlier following my own post from 2013.  Only I think I cut this 2 1/2" wide per a Nancy Zieman Binding Technique.

I am super pleased with the binding on this quilt and think it may be my best finished product ever.

It was first sewn to the front then wrapped to the back and carefully pinned in place so when sewing 'in the ditch' from the front..... it would catch the back binding perfectly.

I always machine-stitch bindings on quilts I make as I do not have the patience, nor time, to hand-stitch them on.  This one looks pretty good.

All washed and dried, stitches checked and overall quilt checked for any problem areas before gifting out.  I like to do this as 1) the quilt looks so wrinkly, crinkly, comfy all washed and dried and 2) if there are any problems, I'd like to find them and not the quilt receiver.  After washing and drying the quilt measures 38" x 48".

Last and certainly not least..... D has an awesome embroidery machine so she designed and embroidered the quilt label that I sewed into one of the back corners.  Keeping all the names off for privacy concerns, but think you can get a feel for the beautiful job D did.  This thread just 'glowed' in a silky lovely way and it is really a lovely, lovely label.

One last look at the finished quilt ready to comfort a sweet baby girl.

Happy Sewing All!  :)