My quilt for Baby Girl

I'm not sure how it started, maybe on one of my many trips to the Quilt Store to plan and pick up fabric for the two lovely quilts that Nana is making for Baby Girl, I decided it was important that I make a quilt for her too. She needed to have a quilt from her Mama and I needed to make this for her no matter how imperfect and beginner my attempt would end up. With the help of several (overdue) library books and many emails and phone conversations with my Mom, I am very proud to have finished my first quilt. I imagine cuddling with my little love in this blanket and hope it's one that she will love.

I decided not to over think the quilting and simply bought a lot of fabric that I loved. I knew the colors would all work well together because I chose my favorite colors. I have a serious obsession with all things striped and polka dotted so there are quite a few of these patterns as well. The fabrics make me happy and I love the variety.

Thanks to a wonderful gift from my Mom of a cutting board and rotary cutter, the cutting of the squares was super easy! It took much longer to decide on the size, but I eventually decided I wanted the final squares to be 3" so I cut my fabric squares to 3 1/2" to account for the seam allowances.

I then spent one evening crawling on the floor laying out squares. A fairly hilarious thing considering the size of my belly. I also spent a great deal of time shooing away the cat who was every curious about why fabric was on the floor and continually had to investigate. 

Once the squares were laid out I spent only a little bit of time arranging them differently. I pretty much just laid them out randomly and as long as the same fabric wasn't close or too much of one color/pattern was too close, I didn't overthink it too much. I wanted it to look random and unplanned.

Then I got to work pinning and sewing the squares together. I thought it would take a lot longer but once I got going I couldn't stop and the rows came together really quickly. My first couple of rows didn't quite match up as well as I would have liked since I was just getting the feel for what a 1/4" seam allowance should be. As I got more practice and more sewing I found myself getting much more consistent. I had a couple mistakes with sewing things backwards (that's why I have a seam ripper!) but overall I found that if I took my time and thought things through before I started sewing (sometimes hard for me) and that I maintained consistency throughout, I didn't have many problems.

I am incredibly pleased with how well the top came together. My seams aren't perfect but I wasn't trying for perfection and I just love the way it looks. The fabrics are bright and happy and I love the squares. I knew I wanted this to be a soft and cuddly baby blanket so I chose to use quilt batting and the very soft minky dot fabric for the quilt backing.

Again I spent an evening crawling on the living room floor pinning the quilting layers together. I was careful to get everything smoothed out and probably pinned way more than necessary.

I decided to quilt the top with straight lines about 1/4" out from the square seams. This was easy and I didn't have to worry about practicing advandaced quilting techniques, I just sewed lines. The quilt got pretty bulking with the addition of the batting and minky fabric so it got a little tedious to do the quilting but I loved seeing the progress and it didn't take nearly as long as I imagined it would.

I was incredibly pleased with the results of the quilting. I feared that somehow this step would ruin all the work I had done to sew the squares together but it definitely completely the quilt. I used white thread so it shows up only subtly on the back and front. There are plenty of areas where the squares don't line up and thus my lines are a bit wonky, but I'd like to think you only notice that if you look hard enough :) The quilt is soft and cozy and obviously already loved by certain family members!

The final step was the binding. I was excited but had the least experience with this step. Basically, I knew nothing about what to do. With the help of some library books and mostly from my Mom, with one especially helpful Facetime session, I attempted my first quilt binding. It was actually alot easier than I anticipated and I really enjoyed this step. I machine sewed the binding on the top and hand sewed it to the back.

I am incredibly proud of my quilt and cannot wait to snuggle a sweet babe in it. As a final finishing touch I added a little "Love Mama" to the bottom corner. I knew I wanted to sign the quilt but this one was meant for Baby from Mama so I decided to add a little hand embroidered love note.