Baby Quilt with a New Quilting Design

A new project interrupting the other running projects.  It was prompted by the firemen’s request for more baby quilts (36 x 36). They keep some quilts in the trucks for when they have to take a baby out of a dangerous situation, and they were running low. And guild meeting is tomorrow. So a time limit. Couldn’t get too fancy.

When I am on good behavior, I spend regular, short amounts of time cutting scraps into squares and rectangles. I start with the largest square I can make and work down to 1 1/2 inch squares then throw the smaller (but at least 3/4 inch) pieces into the crumb jar. So maybe, just maybe, there would be 36 6-1/2-inch squares that would work together. There were. Not ideal, but passable.

I probably spent more time selecting and rearranging than sewing. Luckily there were 6 of the rainbow striped squares; since they dominate it was nice to put them in the center. I’d always thought I’d eventually gather enough crayon-colored squares to go with them, but oh well . . .

Next was quilting design. It seemed a good time to try a new pattern. Very recently I’d read a blog about Dragon-Fruit Fill and it seemed it would go quickly enough. (Here is the link in case you want to try it.) Susan used it in a smaller space; I just enlarged it.

I did it from memory and forgot that her echoes were more sharply angled. Next time. After quilting at least half of it with no problem, suddenly I started skipping stitches. At first it was just on an occasional curve, but it got more frequent and even occurred on straight lines. It no longer seemed like it was a speed change problem, so I changed the needle. That fixed it.Not sure why, but I’ll not complain since it worked.

And here is the finished quilt.

Sorry about the poor light–I won’t have time before guild tomorrow for a better shot.

And I made two more sets of blocks to send to the Sunshine Online Quilt Guild retreat where blocks will be turned into tops. This time I had some cute novelty prints for the centers. A set is 8 because 3 strips of 4-inch and 3 strips of 2 1/2-inch make 8 blocks.

 

 

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I think the original idea for half light edge and half dark was that they would be alternated; however, I think a quilt using all the same background would work out well. An allover design like the ladybugs allows for turning the blocks any way that appeals; A directional fabric, like the jungle print requires some planning when adding the first piece.  Whatever color/value scheme is used, the result wilt be an alternative-grid look.

I have three more sets prepared. I think I’ll stop at 60 since they said they had a good supply. Then I’ll experiment with enlarging the edge pieces to make 12 1/2-inch blocks so that 9 will make a baby quilt. (I don’t want to enlarge the square because keeping it 5-inches allows for using charm packs.)

Linking with Let’s Make Baby Quilts, Moving it forward Monday, and remember to check here for the Scrap Happy list of bloggers who sometimes have scrap projects, but always have interesting ones.

ETA: At guild meeting it was announced that the guild had been giving 100 baby quilts per year to the firemen; they requested 200.