Wednesday, October 31, 2012

DIY Project: 1 Day Baby Quilt

I made this little baby quilt today, all the way from start to finish in one sitting! It is a gift for one of my Swedish friend's baby, and I really hope they both will like it. I used thicker batting this time, compared to my last quilt, as this is for a younger baby, I was thinking it could be used both as a crib-sized quilt and as a baby play mat. I was a bit worried that the thicker batting might make it turn out heavy, like some thicker quilts can get, but luckily it isn't heavy at all. Instead it has a light fluffiness that is very cuddly. 


I wanted a simple design to showcase this horse pattern print, which reminded me of a Swedish Dala horse, a very traditional, Swedish symbol. The horses were pretty large, so I kept the blocks large as well, in order to display the pattern in full. I added in two coordinating solids, and two coordinating prints.

Light aqua backing fabric, and simple, square quilting pattern.

I actually wish I could have gotten my hands on more of the "Dala horse" print, 'Wooden Horses' from Michael Miller, because I really like it, and I would have preferred to use it for the backing as well. Instead I went with the same minty aqua solid cotton as I mixed into the quilt top. In the early evening light of the time when I took these photos, the color look almost white.

Quilt, pre laundry. Here you can also see that the backing fabric is light aqua, not white, as it looks like in the photo below. 

I used a simple grid pattern for the quilting. Initially I had wanted to go with something more similar to my last quilting pattern, but as neither of the fabric in this quilt had a print with a suitable patterns, so I decided not to. The fluffier batting really goes well with this simple, square quilt pattern, as each square is slightly puffed up.

Quilt, post laundry. You can see the slight puffiness of each square, compare to above.

For the binding, I used a homemade coral dot binding, the same one I used on the Elephant blanket. Between the large blocks and the simple grid quilting, this entire project, from cutting to binding, took around 4 hours. It is crib sized.

Fabrics:

Quilt top:
Jay-Cyn Designs for Birch Fabrics, Mod Basics, Abacus Coral
Jay-Cyn Designs for Birth Fabrics, Mod Basics, Solid Coral
Michael Miller, Wooded Horses, Charcoal
Robert Kaufman Kona Cotton, Coral
Dots on white, I don't know the name, or the make

Backing:
Robert Kaufman Kona Cotton, Light Aqua

Binding:
Cay-Cyn Designs for Birch Fabrics, Mod Basics, Dottie Cream Coral

4 comments:

  1. I love the colors but what I really love is the fabric with the dots. So pretty!

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    1. I really like that one as well! Really wish I knew what it was called...

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  2. what do you like to use for batting?

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    Replies
    1. I use organic bamboo batting in all my quilts.

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