NATHAN’S BABY QUILT

As simple as this baby quilt is, I really love how it turned out. Baby Nathan is the first baby among Andrew’s cousins. I wanted to make him a quilt but worried about making something complicated that wouldn’t get done for a while or even while he was still a baby. It’s happened before. Ambitious quilt projects that get derailed for way too long. A hard habit to break, but I’m going to try.

I remembered this simple quilted playmat that just used four squares of fabric. I thought this was the perfect opportunity to choose fabrics that speak for themselves and naturally ended up with Jay McCarroll’s Center City. Jay’s fabrics seem to work their way into a lot of the things I make – this dress, this skirt, this tank. His latest collection is no exception. You’ll see more of it popping up in some upcoming projects. The four prints I chose are both fun and boyish. For the back, I chose a Cloud9 organic flannel. It’s so soft!! Within a few hours, I had stitched the top and basted it. Amazing!

For the quilting, I wanted to try something new. I wanted to try free motion. Kinda scary. I’ve only quilted a mini quilt with free motion, but I’m never going to learn if I don’t start trying. For some reason, I find that a squarish pattern is easier than a loopy pattern. Luckily, that went perfectly with the design of the quilt.

I used my Bernina Stitch Regulator for this. What an incredible invention! The optical eye in the attachment adjusts the speed of the stitching to match how fast you are moving the fabric. This results in more even looking stitches. I’ll have to do a post on just this attachment alone.

The free motion quilting was so liberating! I was able to quilt the entire quilt in just a couple hours and I love how it looks!

The label was done using the embroidery stitches on my machine and then hand stitched onto the back. The last part was the binding, which maybe took the longest. I chose the cute hexagon print from Tula Pink’s Saltwater collection.

I had the quilt finished just in time for getting to meet little Nathan for the first time.