++Quilt

The quilt pile increments with my latest finish; a crib sized blue and orange plus quilt! The quilt has been gifted to my friends Jane and Matt, who are expecting their first baby at the end of September.

To be truthful, I started this quilt long before Jane fell pregnant, around two and a half years ago with no specific recipient in mind. I guess I just trusted that the right parents/baby would present themselves in time.

After receiving a package of fabric I'd recently bought from the US, I couldn't wait to cut into this cute foxy fabric, and I'd been wanting to make a plus quilt for a while. I picked out some blues and oranges that matched nicely. The result was foxes and robots, which is conceptually incongruous but... still very cute!

I used some scraps to piece the back, folded my finished quilt top and back, and away they went into a drawer for two spins around the sun.

Earlier this year I found out Jane was pregnant and my immediate (and incredibly selfish) thought was, "Sweet! I get to make another baby quilt!" But when I remembered the foxes and robots waiting for an owner, I resumed the project and got quilting.

Jane studied pure maths at uni, and Matt is a software developer like me, so the pluses felt especially right. Incidentally they are also expecting a boy, although I thought the colours were right because Jane would like them, not because they are "boy" colours. Like me, they're not the kind of people who think colours are gendered.

Since I made the quilt a while ago, most of the fabrics I used are out of print. Nevertheless they are:

• Monaluna Anika by Jennifer Moore (Foxy, Polka)
• Robot Factory by Caleb Gray (Mini Robots Blue, Mini Robots Orange, Gears Earth, Circuits in Navy for the binding)
• 1001 Peeps by Lizzy House (Scheherazade in Orange, Jewels in Basra Blue, Jewels in Jinnee Orange)

Jago's Quilt

My friends James and Sarah, whose beautiful daughter Juliet was the recipient of the first quilt I ever made, had another baby earlier this year. Born back in May they named their little boy Jago (which is the Cornish version of James, and the 'J' is pronounced the same as with James), and it was an irresistible opportunity to make another baby quilt. Can't have siblings fighting over a blankie after all. :3

I really wanted to use my 1001 Peeps from designer Lizzy House in the purple colour-way. Mixed with black sashing I hoped the parents would dig both the palette and the cute little graphics.

I pieced the quilt back with a similar piano key layout used for Juliet's quilt, and made a label with Jago's name and birthday with a grosgrain ribbon. I think some of the black & white scraps from Juliet's quilt went into the pieced back, and if memory serves I even made an effort to have the finished size of both quilts the same (40" x 48"). So, same same but different. :)

Apologies for the worst photos in the world; black quilts are especially hard to photograph well, and I'm working with my phone camera and a desperate lack of skill...

Luckily I've got this great action shot of the gorgeous little guy on his new quilt to make up for it. He looks pretty chuffed about it!

Thanks for the photo, Sarah!

Joseph's Quilt

A few months ago we went to the first birthday/baptism for our friends Mark and Michele's little boy Joseph. I rashly decided with less than a week before the party that this would be a really great excuse to make another quilt. With the time restriction in mind, I decided to use some of my favourite large scale prints (Castle Peeps, by Lizzy House) and simply sashing some 8" squares together.

I had a go at diagonal grid quilting, using masking tape to mark my quilt lines as I went. (The other conventional technique is to use a fabric pen/marker with disappearing ink, but I haven't added one of those to my arsenal, yet.)

As usual (three out of three, hah!), I pieced the back as well. For some reason this gives me a 50s bowling shirt vibe, which was completely unintentional, but I dig it.

I've only met Joseph a couple of times, but he is a pretty laid back baby (the word "lazy" has been bandied about by his mum and dad, hehe), so I'm hoping the calm blue, black and white palette is going to be a good match to his personality. :)

Play Date with Olivia

Yesterday we had Matt, Ying & Olivia over for baby cuddles and movies, etc. I opportunistically asked them to bring the quilt along so I could add the label. I made a bunny rabbit applique in baby pink; I think it turned out ok, and I like that it's something a bit different.

Olivia is nearly three months old already, and I think she may have doubled in size since the last time I saw her. I took a snap of her on the quilt, because action shots are the best. Incidentally I made the bib (with some of my favourite Heather Ross fabrics), and the skully onesie, too. I'm thinking since it's black on white, and the skulls are kinda cutesy and piratical, it won't be too out there for all those people who think babies shouldn't wear dark colours.

Matt and Ying told me that Olivia is already getting fussy about who can and can't hold her, so I was really pleased that she was happy to be cuddled by/sleep on/drool on/fart on her aunty Kim. :P

Olivia's Quilt

Having had reasonable success with my first quilting endeavor, I decided to make a quilt for my friends Matt & Ying, who were also expecting their first baby. Unfortunately I wasn't going to get away with another black & skully baby quilt (dad would have approved, mum not-so-much), so I decided to go with a red, pink & aqua colour theme. I also wanted to include some fabric with bunnies on them, as Olivia was born in the year of the rabbit.

The quilt top was constructed using a Disappearing Nine Patch block.

I pieced the quilt back with some strips, giving me the opportunity to use a fairly gratuitous amount of that bunny print from Spoonflower. :3

G (an-object-that-tells.tumblr.com) kindly took some beautiful sun-dappled detail shots of this quilt.

This is a great shot of Girl in a Tree Swing (I can't tell if this is the Vanilla Ice Cream or Pink Lemonade colourway... XD), my favourite print from the Sherbet Pips collection.

Oh yes, these prints are so ridiculously sweet. Never fear, I balanced it out with a nice frosty glass of Paulaner during its construction, hehe...

I gifted the quilt at the baby shower before Olivia was born, so I still need to add a label to the quilt with her full name and birthday. Any clever ideas?

Cheers,
Kim

Juliet's Quilt

My first quilting project was for baby Juliet, beautiful first born child of my friends James and Sarah. The proud parents are also metalheads, so I was under strict instructions to avoid pastels. In fact, the more black, the better. It was great to make a baby quilt in a palette that I was already comfortable with, and using some of my favourite skully fabrics.

The quilt top is pretty basic piecing, as I thought it best to start simple. Gotta start somewhere, right? It's been through the washing machine already, giving it that cuddly crinkly look.

The quilt back is also pieced, and I made the label with some ribbon, which I have hand stitched on in a marquee shape (ooer, rah-ther fancy).

So those were my photos. They give you a good overview of the quilt, but I'm extremely useless at any kind of photography. Instead, I left that up to my incredibly talented friend, G (an-object-that-tells.tumblr.com).

Mmm I would trade my whole stash for a thimbleful of her talent... (Incidentally, I absolutely adore this poppy print.)

IMO, the quilt is a great match to baby Juliet and her parents. I've since seen some great photos of her in her black tie-dye jumpsuit using the quilt as play matt. And that was definitely the most gratifying part of the whole process. :)

Update: James kindly permitted me to share said action shot:

Well, I did make a promise to limit the amount of this boring text stuff in my blog, so I might leave it at that.

Cheers,
Kim