I made a lot of baby quilts in 2017 – five to be exact. Five may not sound like a lot to some of you, but five quilts total in one year is a lot for me!
The first quilt was completed in January so technically I started it the previous year. My husband’s cousin (is cousin-in-law a thing?) was having her first baby, a boy, and wanted a southwest theme for his quilt. She is an art teacher and picked a beautiful color pallet of golds, mints, blues, and greys. I knew that she had some specific ideas about how she wanted to decorate the nursery, so I wanted her to also be involved in choosing the pattern and fabrics. We ended up choosing the Over the Rainbow pattern by Keera Job for Live Love Sew and I used Hawthorne Threads for the fabric. Since they print their own material it is easy to get the exact color and print combinations that you want. The quilting was done with an argyle pattern which helped incorporate the angles that we wanted, I also used a striped binding which is quickly becoming my go-to for binding. I really love the way this quilt turned out and it works perfectly with the little guy’s room.
The next four baby quilts were all for my group of friends. The babies were due within a few months of each other so I knew I needed some quick patterns. I choose the Summer in the Park pattern by Missouri Star Quilt Company for the first quilt. It was for a baby boy so I picked a Kaffe Fassett jelly roll with blues and greens and paired that with a solid white jelly roll. This pattern was a lot of fun to make, although some of the points were hard to match up since the cut is on the bias. I had this one quilted with little cars and curvy lines.
The second baby quilt was for a good friend of mine that was having a baby girl. She and her husband are huge animal lovers so I wanted to do something with an animal theme. This turned out to be surprisingly difficult as I had trouble finding anything that really inspired me. I had a jelly roll of Hello Love by Heather Bailey that would be perfect for a baby girl and one of the prints in the line had octopuses on it. I had also wanted to make the Modern Trellis pattern by Must Love Quilts for a while and was able to use the jelly roll for it. This one had flowers, dragonflies, and ladybugs quilted on it, the cream background really shows the quilting pattern well. Though creatively challenging, I’m happy with the results.
Next in line was a friend from work. She was planning a zoo theme with bright colors for her nursery and as soon as I saw these Robert Kaufman Urban Zoologie fabric panels I knew I had to use them. The panels originally had some lighter colors, including a baby pink as the natural border, and I knew that I wanted to brighten those colors up. I chose some coordinating blues, greens, yellows, and oranges and added a new border to the panels, I also made some simple square blocks for filler. This one came together very quickly and was quilted with adorable zoo animals.
The last quilt of the year is one of my favorite baby patterns to make, it is the Sunshine and Shadow pattern from the Tradition with a Twist book. I’ve made it twice in the past but unfortunately didn’t take pictures of them. I used Hawthorne Threads again to pick six fabrics from three different colors – I used blue, mint, and grey. I had it quilted with a curly star design and used the stripe binding once again. One day I need to make this pattern in a large quilt for myself!
I’ve seen most of these quilts many times since making them. It always makes me happy to see them getting worn and used for their intended purpose.
And that’s it for baby quilts, at least for the foreseeable future!
