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Sunday, October 11, 2015

Baby quilt inspiration

As I was rummaging through the scrap bin looking for fabric for Lori's mini mystery, Country Roads, I found a piece of this Alexander Henry fabric. I'd made a couple baby quilts over the years that included this adorable fabric, and I remembered that the neighbors are expecting in November. I've made baby quilts for all the babies born on the block since we moved here.

Alexander Henry fabric. An oldie, but a goody.

I was able to fussy-cut four six-inch squares (finished size) from my scrap. I decided that I'd scatter those squares across the top. At first I thought I'd sew six-inch nine-patches, but I didn't like any of the arrangements I sketched out for that. Then I decided to cut coordinating fabric in four-, three- two- and one-inch squares (finished), and combine those units into six-blocks. I cut up the rest of the focus fabric into one-inch squares and included them too.

I pieced the squares until I was nearly out of units to work with and then cut some more pieces. Pieced more blocks and cut more units until I had enough six-inch blocks to make a six-by-six arrangement. As usual, I carefully placed all the squares to balance the color placement, but either something went wrong in the sewing or I didn't notice it earlier, and I ended up with the large dark blue and dark purple clustered together. It doesn't bother me enough to undo it, and I'm almost positive that moving things around would probably result in a cluster of some other fabric or color that would also bug me. Murphy's Law of quilting?

Top is 36 x 36 inches.

The top is 36 x 36 inches. I think that's an acceptable size for a baby quilt if it makes it to the baby shortly after birth. I need to find a little more than a yard of fabric for the backing so I don't have to piece it. Not sure about the binding. Maybe try to use up the scraps from the top or go with a solid black.

Linking up to Nancy's Quilty Inspiration for this week.