Today I’m sharing a recent baby quilt finish. This is one of my quilt patterns I’m calling broken rows. I’m working on getting this pattern & some of my other patterns published, which is taking longer than expected. I will need testers when that happens, so keep your eye on my Facebook page & Instagram if you’re interested. By the way, I’m typing this up at my parents because my house is still currently without power due to hurricane Michael.
A Special Color Palette
I get lots of requests for baby quilts through my aunt. She works at a school & it seems teachers or their kids are always having babies! They usually have a certain color theme in mind which rarely fits anything I have on hand. That of course means I have to buy fabric – not a chore that I mind at all! ; )
The colors requested for this baby quilt were lavender, yellow, & gray. Seemed like something easy to find, but it was not! I finally found all the fabric I needed at CCs Fabric Closet on Etsy. Her slogan is “out of print, hard to find quality quilting fabric”, which was very appropriate for my situation. I found everything I needed in the form of mostly 1/2 yard cuts. That means I have a little extra to keep in the stash!
As I mentioned above, I’m using one of my quilt patterns for this quilt. You can see more of my quilts here & here. I designed it to work with a jelly roll, but I was unable to find a jelly roll with the colors required. I have several baby quilt patterns I’ve designed that incorporate a blank spot for a name. They are all about 30″ x 36″ plus or minus an inch or so.
Whenever I get the patterns written up, I plan on having options to eliminate the name plate & have options for different sizes. They will also be designed to work with pre-cuts, like charm packs, layer cakes, & jelly rolls. Since I couldn’t use a jelly roll for this one, I stacked up my fabrics & cut out some 2 1/2″ x WOF strips.
Next, I cut each strip into 12″ pieces.
I have 3 of each of the colors, so I laid them out & stacked them up – lavender, yellow, then grey – until they were all used. This ensured I had a good mix in my strips.
Once everything was all stacked up, it was time to mark & sew!
Quilt Assembly
I’m sewing these strips together with alternating 45 degree miters. Since I like to chain sew as much as possible, I started by marking all my lavender & yellow strips. I left the grey one to the side as I stacked things up.
I really had to pay attention to which way the miter was going on each row, so the marking would be correct.
Once all the lavender & yellow strips were sewn, I went through the same process with the greys. Then I cut off all the corners & pressed the rows flat.
You may have noticed my pattern has some pieces that are shorter on the ends. To keep from cutting a bunch of different lengths, I sewed these rows into tubes.
Then I marked the distance from the point of the pieces that needed to be shorter & cut the tube.
This worked great except for the strips I cut on the wrong color. Not really a big deal since most people wouldn’t notice unless I told them. I know y’all will keep my secret! ; )
After all the strips were sewn, I had to decide what color to make the name plate. I knew it would be yellow because my thread would be purple. The grey is really too dark for a name plate. This lighter yellow print was the perfect option!
Once I had the main quilt sewn together, I decided to add a 3″ border in the backing fabric.
Now it’s time for the fun part – quilting!
Thread Sketching a Name
Before I make a quilt sandwich, I need to add the name. I will pin a small piece of batting behind the name plate for more stability. Then I sketch out the name with a pencil.
Using my free motion quilting foot, I trace over the name several times until it looks finished to me.
Now it’s time to make a quilt sandwich! I opted to do a meandering wavy pattern across the strips. This is a nice contrast to all the angular lines.
For the border, I did two rows of straight lines, a row of waves, & two more straight line rows. After I trimmed it up, I serged the edges. This makes it so much easier to bind!
I used leftover 12″ strips to make a scrappy binding & added a label I made with my new stamp!
Here are a couple pictures of the finished quilt. I had to wash it at my parents & by the time it was done {and I was done with computer work}, the sun was starting to set.
My mom held it up so y’all could see the whole thing…
What do y’all think? I like how it turned out & I hope the recipient likes it too! Hope y’all have a great week! : )
