A Little Late

I didn't make quilts for my first two girls.  There was a baby shower Big Sister, back when she was Only, and gifts were abundant.  My mom made one for Little Artist.  I've posted about Organique's, but Baby (who is hardly a Baby and really needs a bloggy-name!) didn't get one from Mama for a while.  

If my sewing room was clean, I might've found a flat spot to take a picture.

I decided a quilt would be her Christmas gift, and I'd make it larger than some of our other baby quilts.  I found some fabric on clearance (but of course) and "designed" (yes, consider that term very loosely used) her quilt.

Love my dots. :)

The top fabrics match, and are blue/cream/brown, with darling butterflies and coordinating spots.  You don't know how rare it is that I end up with coordinating fabrics.  This was very exciting to me. :)  If you look at the picture above, you can see that I don't trim the selvedge from the fabric. I'm cheap that way. Worse, I actually work to incorporate the darling little dots that show the colors used in the design.  Ah, it's getting out of control, really.  Quilts, baby's birthday dress, aprons...  I just can't bear to abandon them!

More dots.  Ill-matched backing.

The back is a nice quilter's cotton I picked up out of town (this stuff never makes it to the clearance racks locally).  It really doesn't match the top (it's pinkish instead of creamy), but the vintage look and feel of the roses makes up for it.  Maybe.  In any case, I used what I had, and it will work! :)  I also don't know the proper crib-size quilt apparently (the batting fit, but it was wider than the fabric.  Oh well, an opportunity to add in some dots...), as this is the second baby quilt on which I've had to widen the back. 

I used 80/20 cotton/poly batting, and I the weight and loft is just right for machine quilting.  I literally used every bit of the fabrics (I think I had 2 yards for the back, and 2 total for the front), and even "pieced" several pieces.  One corner square in fact is an entirely different fabric, mostly brown (less warm) with some muted blue flowers printed thereon.  I have decided that imperfections are character, and I embrace them now instead of letting them cause angst in my head, or stress in my pocketbook.  I'm not in love with the pre-packaged binding 'look' and 'feel,' but I AM in love with the pre-packaged binding 'time' and 'effort of application,' so there we are. :)  The center rectangle is quilted with 2"ish squares not-at-all-on-center, and you can see the meander quilting outside of that. As with Organique's quilt, Baby has her cursive name hidden among the machine stitches. 

 If there is opportunity for future Baby quilts, I will remember that it's best to get it done within a reasonable amount of time after their birth.  Reasonable being defined as "before said baby can walk up and push all the fancy stitching buttons on the machine, or turn it off entirely, while you're carefully trying to stitch decently."