Don't know what the years will bring but for the beginning I did well, I guess. And I might at least be remembered as the aunt who made the quilt.
After finishing the baby quilt for my sister's new son almost on time it took me about a month to bring it to the post office... I am so bad with wrapping, packing and sending off parcels. But I finally did it!
Three days later the quilt arrived at its destination, sister approved and I can show it here, too.
As you might remember I was trying to make a rather plain quilt my sister could like. Of course, it's for my nephew but I think he wouldn't mind something like little red ridinghood under pink skies and heartshaped clouds and raining flowers...
I didn't really think a lot about the design though, it rather just happened. I had been making those little placemats using that cute hedgehog fabric a little time ago, still being in a autumn-leaf-hedgehog-deer-forest-mood. Adding the Love Beads of FunQuilts, which I like very much, this hedgehog inhabited forest came to my mind and
I made a sketch of it to know how it had to be pieced. At that time a little bird sat on one of the trees, later in the process it was turning into a squirrel - always working intuitionally...
The squirrel and the little trees on the back of the quilt are the only appliqued parts, the rest is really pieced. I had to "make it fit" a bit when it came to the trunks of the trees but the result looked still okay to me.
The back is of that fake kind of "I had to piece it because I had only leftovers of the fabrics I used for the top" type but I like this hint of randomness, faked or not.
Of course I found a way to throw in my inevitable printed tags... the baby's name and birthdate had to appear somewhere, right?
During the process of quilting I went from machine to hand and again back to the machine, encouraged by you, my dear readers, and ended up with a somehow herring-bone resembling appearance of the quilting which might have been caused by the lack of space around my sewing machine... you know, it's very cramped cozy in my studio. The walking foot worked well, the silk thread I've been using for sewing and quilting did not break once and I was pleased that my first real quilt turned out quite pretty.
Since the batting is 100% cotton, too, I suppose the quilt will look all nicely rumpled after the first visit to the washing machine/dryer and I hope I will see it maybe in a year or so when it has "grown up". These virginal quilts look a bit like babies themselves, don't they?
Happy to be able to join you good aunts out there!
I hope you all have a great day today!
Edit: I forgot to mention I consulted "the Modern Quilt workshop" (ISBN 1-59253-152-0) for the binding and followed the instructions for the Traditional Binding which worked very well. It's easy to do and the result is convincing.
