Craft Ahoy!

Remember how I said the next quilt would be for me? Turns out I needed to churn out a quickie before that one, so here it is. A baby quilt made from vintage linens I’ve collected in the past years. Vintage might be pushing it, but “preowned” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

I can usually tell if I like something I’ve crafted, after it’s all finished, at least. But today I can’t. I mean, it’s pink and baby blue. Even worse, it’s got florals and tiny sheep. Now, I knew this when I selected the fabrics which is why I decided to quilt it as modernly as possible.

The back is less girly but blue florals, none the less. The random quilting pattern works a bit better on the backside. Since there was nothing to lose, I used a yellow and orange fabric from a pillowcase for the binding.

The finished quilt measures roughly 43×43 inches. The “pattern” is a basic brick tile layout, with 3×5 inch tiles. I copied the use of the borders from a friend. I noticed that she sent quite a few readers my way, so thank you and welcome! The pink fabric of the wide border is my favorite, by far. It’s a 1977 print by Tampella called “Vinterblomma”.

It looks alright in tiny doses. It’s the complete thing that will take some time to grow on me. That’s alright because this quilt will be homeless for a while, until a baby announcement is (inevitably) heard from somewhere. It can stay on my cabinet to remind me that I should sew (and knit!) more from my stash. Maybe next week I’ll get started on the more subtle fabrics chosen for my quilt. That is if the pinks are out of my system. I did kind of like that combination of yellow and pink…

What does an almost 7-year-old girl want for her birthday? I have it on good authority that butterflies might do the trick. To be completely fair, my niece chose the fabrics herself, so the only risk is that she might have overgrown them in the weeks it took me to actually make this quilt. This is my second quilt, and the first with a pieced back and homemade binding, so excuse the silly amount of photos below.

The fabric is Moda’s Daydreams, which I bought in the form of a jelly roll and two charm packs. The quilt measures 57 by 48 inches which I deemed to be enough for nap times and such. She has an enormous bed for a six year old and my tiny machine was not up to making a bed spread.

I pieced the front in the fashion of the Bento Box quilt, though I didn’t have a pattern to use. This had its drawbacks, as the arrangement of the strips isn’t as balanced as it could be. Note to self: invest in the actual pattern next time. In any case, I pieced log cabin squares first, then cut them into four smaller squares. These cut squares were repieced so that each resulting larger square would have the correct combination of lighter and darker fabrics.

For example, this square is made up with two smaller squares featuring dark fabric in the middle and lighter fabric in the center and outer strips (up left and bottom right) and two other squares where the combination goes the other way around: lighter in the middle, darker surrounding it (up right and bottom left). Phew, I’m sure that made no sense whatsoever. And nevermind the slight wonkiness of the square, I like to pretend its due to gravity and not my piecing skills.

The back was pieced, too. Not due to any ambitions, mind you, but simply because the butterfly fabric was not wide enough to use on its own. The green prints came from my stash and are from previous Moda and Marcus Brothers collections. The horizontal strip is pretty much all I had left over from the jelly roll and charm packs after the front was pieced. The quilting, made in concentric squares in the middle of the strips, shows well on the backside. This was a really easy pattern to quilt with the help of some 1″ wide masking tape. Much easier than stitching in the ditch, where mistakes show much more.

As mentioned, I made the bias tape for the binding myself, out of 1/2 yard of Moda’s In The Pink fabric. Easy and faster than I thought. I machine stitched it on the front and then slip stitched the back for an invisible (nearly) result.

I’m pretty happy with the results, and can only hope that my niece likes this quilt, too. Quilting for qifting is fun, but the next quilt will be for me to keep! Fabrics for two quilts have been chosen but I haven’t made up my mind yet on which to start.