Baby quilt for CRW

Here’s my entry for the Quilt Festival over at Amy’s Creative Side. It’s the first quilt I ever made all on my own–I did make a small lap quilt with my mom back in college, but she ended up finishing the quilting for me so I am not counting it!

So, this one is special since I started it and finished it on my own–with a little help from my mom with the machine quilting and a lesson on binding. And my friend Suzanne who let me use her machine for some quilting while I waited for a presser foot to come in the mail.

So I made it all by myself…sort of. Ok, no. Not really.

Anyway, it was a present for a very dear friend in England who just had a baby. Back in January, I emailed her some different fabric options, she and her husband picked the border fabric (which I bought from the awesome Tomato in Japan). In fact, I loved the border fabric so much I ended up using a big piece for the back.

I wasn’t sure what I would do for a pattern, but then I saw this post on design*sponge. I figured “Wonky Log Cabin” would be hard to mess up!

I used the solids that I picked up in Philadelphia at Spool (to go with some different fabric, oh well!) ages ago and then I bought some patterned fabric at Joann’s to match.

It felt like a fun and organic process–I just kept building on each square and it all came together. I learned some new things, like the machine quilting and binding. But mostly, it was about not being afraid to just go ahead and try without being an expert or using a pattern. 

Lessons learned? Next time I would probably quilt the dark blocks with matching thread next time. White thread stood out–and so did my mistakes!

I was worried about the crazy bright colors but I think it all worked pretty well….but it is bright. Really, really bright.

But of course the nicest thing was getting the text from my friend saying she had received it and loved it! It might be a while before I meet this little baby, but in the meantime, she’s got something that I made just for her. Welcome, Little Miss C–I’m so glad you’re here.