Spruce It Up Quilting: baby quilts

Showing posts with label baby quilts. Show all posts

Friday, April 24, 2015

Shannon visits Lolah!

As I was finishing up quilting on a customer quilt one day in early March, Hollie came over with her cousin and brought along the three quilts she planned on quilting the next day. (It takes time to choose thread and panto graphs as friends of Lolah can appreciate!) Two were baby quilts, made exactly the same with the same backing. She intended them to be gifts for friends expecting.

I had to leave early that day so I helped Hollie and Shannon load the baby quilts, gave them brief instructions and left them on their own.

Flannel baby quilt no 1 was quilted with Bronze Glide thread by Filtec, and 100% poly extra-loft batting; Shannon was brave and/or confident enough to go freehand!

They did really well flying solo... I came home to an empty shop and one quilt done. The next day, they returned to finish the next baby quilt. For this one she chose Filtec's thread called Tar Heel and added ruler work to her freehand. Not bad for a newbie!! This is Shannon's 12-yr-old daughter Jessica.

Shannon's third quilt is for Jessica who is a lover and rider of horses.

The backing is a beautiful batik; Shannon picked Sea Green Glide thread by Filtec, and Hearts in Bloom panto.

I was surprised at how speedy and in control Shannon was on Lolah. She's a potter and told us she has to work at higher speed on the wheel than most so perhaps it wasn't such a surprise to watch her go.

She started at 1 pm and was done this large quilt at 4:30 pm...

Great control...

A gorgeous quilt for Jessica...

I hear she's getting a few more ready for her next visit. I'm looking forward to it!

Toodles!

Lorette

Friday, March 20, 2015

Baby & Me!

Two good friends of ours from California became grandmothers again: one for the 6th time and the other for the second time. Both babies are girls! Since we were headed to Los Angeles, it was time I got quilting in time to deliver these.

I bought a baby quilt top at the Lupin Quilt Fair last summer and after close inspection, I decided it needed some alterations. I'd started to take it apart but Hollie finished that task and worked out this top for me.

I quilted it using FilTec's Glide in a light mauve (can't remember the color name now), 80/20 batting and Hearts in Bloom pantograph.

Since I didn't want to end up with a half pattern at the end of the quilt, I quilted the top row of the design, the bottom row, then centered the third pass in between.

Then I filled in the space between these with some loops. It was a quick pattern to quilt and very pretty design for a little girl.

The quilt isn't very big which is unusual for me... I like big girl/boy bed-sized quilts.

It turned out quite lovely.

The second one started out as remnants from a small "Little Twister" quilt. I sewed the leftover pieces together to show how this special ruler worked and the design it produces.

Hollie started the process of adding borders and Marie and I continued until we were satisfied.

This quilt was quilted with the same pantograph design and batting. I used FilTec's Glide in Salmon color.

I decided to apply the binding while the quilt was still loaded on Lolah! What a novelty! This turned out to be a great time saver.

One problem I encountered was that I didn't have enough backing in the white on white fabric so I chose another fabric that matched and added some leftovers in the middle. It brings the design to the backing which is really fun!