Baby Quilt is Finished, Part 2

Here it is the day before the baby shower and I am waiting on the pink baby quilt to finish drying!  I don't like to dry new quilts in the dryer, especially a gift quilt. For that matter, I don't dry any of my hand made quilts in the dryer, it wears them out quicker.  I thought I had finished the baby quilt but then noticed that the border was kind of wavy. I thought that a little quilting would straighten it out. Here is the border with the quilting. I added a little cable stitch. Hope you can see it.

 

Here is a picture that is closer on the cable stitch in case the above picture doesn't show well.

 

 

I was starting to panic a little because it was Thursday and I hadn't finished the cable on the borders, but my daughter offered to help with the quilting on the borders. So with her help, I calmed down and we finished in time!  Now the only thing left is for it to dry and I will wrap it later today. . .the party is tomorrow!

Do you think the borders look wavy now?

 

My daughter and her family are leaving tomorrow! :( I have had so much fun while they were here.  Yesterday we went to the Pecos Indian Ruins National Park. My husband and I have been there before, but it is a very enjoyable place to visit and see all the history behind that area.  We then went to Santa Fe, ate some Chinese food and went shopping at my favorite hobbies and crafts store!  When we got home, we were all exhausted! It was a full day starting at 8 a.m. and ending at 8 p.m.

After my daughter leaves I will set up my sewing again and continue with my string basket weave quilt.  I will let you know how that goes.  I am almost ready to put it on the quilting frame to hand quilt it and start another one.  All in all, I will be making 3 of the string basket weave quilts for my kids. I have 4 kids, but I have already made my youngest son a quilt. So, I only need 3 more!  

Of course, that's only my children.  I still need to make quilts for all the grandchildren!  Oh my goodness!

Meanwhile . . .keep on quilting everyone!

Aveli

Baby! Baby! Baby Doll That Is!

I have finished putting together the Baby Doll Quilt for my granddaughter. And, as promised I have several pictures.

Let me start at the beginning:

I wanted to use scraps for this little quilt because I have been sewing "feeder" paper strips after every step of sewing blocks for other projects.  I have several of these "feeder" paper foundation blocks.  They measure approximately 8 1/2" x 2 1/2". I say approximately because I don't cut them precisely with a ruler. I just take a sheet of 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper and cut across the sheet.  I can get 4 strips out of each sheet of paper. I use printer paper that I have already printed on both sides; which I do frequently when testing out sizes of patterns or designing a pattern.  Instead of just chucking them in the trash, I recycle them into these strips to be used for foundation piecing.

So, I took three of these strips and sewed them end to end and came up with an approximate size of the width of the Baby Doll Quilt.  Here is what three strips look like sewn together. I do not remove the paper foundation until the whole blanket is sewn together. This gives the little pieces more stability while I am working with them. Once the blanket is sewn together, I do not need the paper because they have been sewn cross and lengthwise so they have stability on their own.

Once I had sewn enough of these "strip blocks" together, I laid out the little quilt.

I separated the strips because laid out together, with no spaces between strips was too small. So I decided to put some sashing in between each "strip block". Now it was larger. Here it is laid out with the sashing.

Now it was starting to look very nice.  But, I thought it was too small to actually wrap the baby doll in it. So I added another strip and another sashing. Here it is all sewn together with 1 1/2" sashing and 1 1/2" borders.  I put the baby doll on top to make sure that it was big enough to wrap around the doll.  It is!
It measures approximately 24" x 26". The next step is to remove the paper foundations.

I will not put any batting in it because I do not want it to be too bulky for my granddaughter to hold.  The backing is the only thing left for me to add besides the binding and tying. I am planning on tying it with a very thin ribbon. All the fabrics used on this blanket were scraps, even the sashing, backing, and ribbon for tying.  I will post a picture of the completed project.

Hope you enjoyed my journey.  If you have any questions, please feel free to use the contact form on this blog.

Happy quilting!
Aveli