Isabel's baby quilt
Date made: August 2005
My Dad has a lady friend. This lady friend has MANY grandchildren .. too numerous to count in fact. :-) One of her granddaughters (Elizabeth) is having a baby this coming September .. they know it's going to be a girl and have named her Isabel (Spanish version of Elizabeth, as the Dad is Hispanic). Recently, my Dad was in rehab (for his 3rd stroke) at a hospital quite a distance from his & his lady friend's homes but near to Elizabeth's home (and my own home actually). Elizabeth offered to bring her grandmother to see my Dad. (The added benefit was that the grandmother and Elizabeth could have a nice visit.) This was very generous of Elizabeth, so I wanted to show my appreciation.
From my stash (woo hoo!), I was able to put together one of my favorite patterns for baby quilts .. Rail Fence. It looks dramatic but is incredibly easy to construct. I made a 3 rail block, with the middle rail wider than the outer rails and of a focus fabric. The 2 outer rails were coordinating solids.
When it came time to make the border, I knew I wanted a wide strip of the focus fabric with a narrower strip of one of the solids on the outside edge. The only problem was that I didn't have *quite* enough of the solid ... I was about 8 inches short. Not to be thwarted by something as simple as not having enough fabric (coupled with the fact that the solid was a weird shade of hot pink, not currently available), I decided to use short segments of the other solid in the middle of each border piece as an accent that got me the length I needed. Finally, I found a nifty graduated dyed fabric at Joann's for the binding.
I backed it with light pink fleece only. I've done this on another quilt and I really like this effect: it's marginally puffy like low-loft batting, shows the quilting beautifully, is VERY soft, cuddly and drapeable. AND it's usually extra wide, so conceivably, the baby quilt could be wider than 45", although this one is about 44"x44".
The quilting motifs are always the hardest thing for me to decide on.
For this quilt, I decided to do a continous hearts-and-leaves thing in the outer border and a different continous leaf thing in the Rail Fence block columns. Both designs are stencils.
The continous leaf design is one of my favorites because 1) I actually like it [grin] 2) it looks very nice and 3) it's easy for me to do.
Then, as an extra added attraction, I included a pillow, made from the same focus fabric, that I had constructed in an heirloom sewing class a couple of months ago.
And since it was the same fabric as the baby quilt... Elizabeth will soon be the proud owner of a quilt *and* chair pillow. :-)
AHA!!! See, if you've been reading sequentially, THIS is what I decided to do with that "Tucking in the Round" pillow!
The only downside to this quilt was, since it was a spur of the moment idea, it didn't even make it to my List of Quilts To Do, so I don't have the satisfaction of crossing off an item!
However, *that* goal (crossing off UFOs as they get done) is a continuing effort, of which I really am making headway. :-)