Tuesday, October 11, 2011

My Two First Baby Quilts

My previous post described quilts for my grand nieces and grand nephew.  I have made two other baby quilts that I remember.  One was for the first child of a work colleague of my son.  I made it from a collection of two-tone fat quarters with geometric shapes that I had bought on impulse because the fabric collection was tied together with a pretty bow in an appealing presentation at a vendor booth at a quilt show. I thought it could be fun to point out the circle, square, and triangle shapes to a toddler so I finally untied the parcel and ... gasp... used it instead of just admiring it!  Here is Olivia's quilt (pre-assembly) on my design wall.




 And here are close-ups of the geometric fabrics and the label



My very first quilt for a baby was for the secretary I was very fond of.  Its inspiration came from a one page idea I tore out of a random magazine.   I think it was a freebie pattern in an advertisement promoting a fabric collection. The quilt is made entirely of rectangle squares that are sewn together at right angles to form a picket fence like piece.  Three "pickets" sewn together make a square and the orientation of the squares alternates between vertical and horizontal pickets.  By strategically placement of the pale colors always on the non-central picket, the quilt appears to have stars all over it.  My colors are strongly contrasting between light and dark but pretty random.  I like to think I have developed better color skills with time. I framed the quilt by adding the diagonally pieced outer borders.

  

1 comment:

  1. Wow! Hadn't seen these before! I really like how the diagonal border adds to the star one, and I agree that although it is a pretty adorable quilt in its own right, your color skills have improved since then.

    I love the fabric in Olivia's quilt, and the way it turned out - and I hear you on the "but it looked so adorable all bunched in a little bow" thing, it trips me up in fabric stores too. I am actually turning out to be quite the layer cake addict, too. A bunch of 10" squares that all coordinate? Sign me up!

    Also, I am beginning to develop a serious case of label envy from looking at all your quilts. A letter case is something my beloved little Janome lacks, and I have seen some really cute labels on Etsy but this far been unable to make a decision on what sort of labels *I* in particular should use. Clearly, we need to schedule an on-the-phone co-shopping and brainstorming session. :-)

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