I Spy a Square Quilt

Here it is, my very last quilt of 2011! This is for a gorgeous little baby girl, our friends' daughter, which her mum asked to make a number of months ago. It was a bit difficult to get decent photos in the dark midwinter light but I did my best!

This was the sort of project I love - lots of scope to develop an idea and colours and I decided on a red, pink and aqua colour scheme as it has been my favourite all year! I also have lots of fabric in these colours in my stash so it was a natural choice.

I went with a "square within a square" type design (although one of the internal "squares" is a rectangle!) and it allowed me to use some teeny tiny precious fabric scraps I had been saving. Better again, a lot of the internal squares work as I Spy type squares as I fussy cut most of them, so there is lots of interest there for little E. I know that other quilts I have done with similar prints have been a real hit with my friends' babies and they love picking out the birds and animals, so hopefully E will too.

I found this a slow project to work on, for some reason it just did not come together as easily as most of my quilts do. I took a long time to piece the blocks and do the layout and also ran into some probs with my backing fabric, requiring me to take it off and redo. I won't bore you with the details, but a lot of unpicking was involved! But alls well that ends well and I think it was worth the time and effort.

I quilted it using a meandering stipple, but added loops and little hearts randomly throughout. I was really pleased with my little hearts  - it took a little practice to get used to doing them, but I just love the effect! I got the idea from Jessica's Double Wedding ring quilt and I'll definitely be experimenting with other little motifs for future projects.

The (second!) backing is a Jenean Morrison print from the California Dreamin' range.

And the binding is a cotton poplin with tiny pink and red apples - I've used this before as binding and the fact that its much lighter weight than quilting cotton makes it perfect for binding.

The finished size is approx 64" x 56" and sized for a toddler type bed, or to layer up over covers on a big girl bed. It's been washed and dried and is all ready to give to my friend who I will be meeting over the holiday period!

Quilt Stats:

Name: I Spy a Square quilt
Size: 64" x 56" approx
Fabric: Various Kona solids plus prints from my stash including the following lines- Bliss, It's Hoot, Just Wing It, Willow Wren, Ta Dot, All Star II, Penny Lane, Sherbet Pips, On a Whim 2 and more!
Quilting: Quilted by me on my home machine with a meandering stipple with loops and hearts
Batting: Warm and White
Pattern: My own design

Quilty Love......

It's getting to that time of year again when its practically impossible to get decent photos. During the week its pitch black by the time I get home from work, and even at the weekends the daylight tends to be cloudy, grey and miserable, even when its not raining. The rain stopped this afternoon for a few minutes and I ran out to the garden with hubbie in tow to try to get some pics of my latest quilt top which is just too big to get an indoor photo of.

This is my red, pink and aqua quilt from my Winter Stitching list and is for our friends' baby girl...just in time for Christmas! It's more of a toddler/child size quilt than a baby quilt but that is the way its intended.

I really love this combo of colours, I think its my absolute favourite at the moment. And, because its my fave, I had a huge range of fabrics to choose from in my stash and my scrap basket - so much so that I would say I only cut 2/3 of what I had pulled for it!  Some of my last scraps of particular lines went into this one, and the tiny inner squares were perfect to use up the small pieces I had saved. I went with a square within a square type design for it (although some of the internal "squares" are actually rectangles!) and used 3 different block designs to bring interest and movement to the quilt.

I previously posted pics of some of the blocks - many of which are fussy cut to make the best use of the prints I had. Don't they work well together? Two of the block designs have the internal square/rectangle off-centre, which actually worked great because I could move and turn them around to have the same blocks side by side but with a completely different look.

I am going to use some of my lovely IKEA hearts fabric to back it, although I need to add a fabric column to it to get it wide enough - going to use some large fabric blocks in the front colours for this. Once I have that done, I'm ready to baste it. I have a big can of 505 basting spray that I got from Janette in River Fabrics and I absolutely can't wait to try it out on this one. It will be my first time spray basting, so wish me luck! I'm slightly nervous as I have the pinning down to a fine art at this stage and hope the spray basting works ok.

I'm planning to free motion quilt in my usual meandering stipple, although I'm thinking of trying some hearts in the quilting pattern like Jessica did in this quilt - I'm thinking that would be perfect for a baby girl!

I'm also pretty much done with my Christmas runner swap items. I just need to handsew the binding to the back and handfinish the little ornaments tonight in front of the fire so it will be all ready for the post office on Monday morning.

Hope you're having a great weekend :-)