Gingham Heart Baby Quilt

This quilt has been in the works for a while now!

  Sometime around April, I came across this adorable knit blanket pattern. I loved that it was sweet and detailed but would work equally well for a boy or girl baby. I thought about buying the pattern, but I'm a slow knitter, especially when it comes to blankets. (I have two blankets going that I've been working on for over 5 years each.....)

  So I did some thinking about how I could apply the same concept to sewing! After a while I remembered a gingham quilt that Jess from Craftiness is Not Optional made last year, and decided that would be perfect!

  I did a bunch of adding and subtracting and such to figure out all my sizes, then bought some fabric and set to work. I used Kona Cotton in White, Iron Grey, and Steel, all found at fabric.com.

  I've only made one quilt before this, when I was about 13.... it turned out pretty bad for several reasons: I didn't have the 'proper' tools and materials, I missed half of the classes that were supposed to teach me how to do it, and I was absolutely a beginning seamstress at the time. Anyway, since then my overall sewing has vastly improved, I have better equipment, and I had the internet to fall back on for advice, so this one turned out much, much better!

  In fact, I'd say for my second quilt ever it came out remarkably well! I managed to get all of my corners except one to line up properly on the first try, and I didn't get any puckers while quilting. The quilting is my favorite part of this! I stitched in the ditch first on all of the rows and columns... it isn't perfect, but it sure gave me a lot of practice!

  And of course, I added hearts. =) I actually just used my regular foot on my regular machine to sew them. I traced a heart shape on the squares where I wanted them with chalk and followed that line. It was pretty difficult to squeeze even this little quilt (It's only 38.5" square) through the 7" harp space on my machine, but I sewed very slowly and they turned out even for the most part. I knotted and buried the threads as shown here. I really love the way those hearts look!

  I used this fabric for the backing (and I have quite a bit of it left, since this quilt is small!) but it's not my favorite part of the quilt. If I were to make this again, I would use solid grey minky for the backing, because I love the way minky feels, and because the quilting would show up better on the back.

  As it is, even with white stitching it's difficult to see the quilting until you get pretty close.

  I used more of the Kona Cotton Steel to make the binding- I initially planned for a 1" binding, but I didn't realize until I was double-checking my calculations that the binding is supposed to be 'full', so in the end I went for a 1/2" binding... I machine sewed it to the front and hand-sewed it to the back.

  The squares finish at 3.5" and I used approximately a yard of each of my three front fabrics.

  I am really, really happy with how this quilt turned out! I just hope I love it as much after washing. I haven't done that yet- the wrinkling is just from stuffing it through my sewing machine! ;-)

  3 things left to photograph before baby arrives, and one to finish sewing! I'd better get back to work! =)

Thanks for stopping by,