The Baby Boom is Over

For the foreseeable future, there are no baby quilts.

I love making baby quilts!!  They finish up fast and loved by the parents and hopefully the children someday.  I always hope for them to be well-loved and used and passed on perhaps to future children or grand-children.

But for now, none of my relatives or close friends are pregnant.  I guess this gives me some time for a new project though.

Most recently I used a pattern from Cloud 9 fabrics to create this beautiful throw-size baby quilt for our new niece Remi.  Mom picked the colors and I adore how it turned out.

The back is just the scraps and a tumbler template with a slight sashing in the middle and a pretty bold space.  I ran out of scraps.  In thinking about what to do with that space, what came to mind were the drawings of another sister-in-law -- 2 of which are hanging in my daughters' bedroom.  With her permission, I used a lightbox to trace them onto the white fabric and then raw-edge appliqued leaves onto the branches with smaller scraps.

The entire quilt was then free-motion quilted in my usual meandering stitch and bounded in a gray and yellow floral.

Then it was a very small, think carseat size, "quilt" for a friend's baby boy.  I bought an adorable farm print at a quilt show and straight-line quilted it to a flannel backing with no batting. 

I do NOT do needle arts.  A friend of mine crocheted the raw edges using a fun, fuzzy yarn.  My pictures are terrible but the quilt is adorable! 

Last but not least is a quilt I like to call "Tail End".  I made it for the 5th, and most likely last, child of a very good friend and I think that the staggered chevron/arrows look like little bird tails flying by.  It's all half-square triangles using a method that starts with 10" squares that the Missouri Star Quilt Co. has a video tutorial for.  It came together pretty quickly but I didn't think that my squares were any better than the traditional method, just easier to put together. 

The back is a Cloud 9 fabric by Eloise Renouf called Nimbus in Navy. 

The red square on the grass?  That would be the results of my son breaking my camera.  It's working but not well and definitely needs to be replaced!!!

Now with all my self "required" quilts done, I can work on a few for me!!  One that I've been wanting to try is the appliqued US map quilt.  And with the 4th of July right around the corner, I've been thinking of doing it in red, white, and blue.  So today I printed a blank map and began identifying the colors.  Each state would be a different fabric of course so it wouldn't necessarily be the same but I'm not sure that I love limiting the states to just red and blue (on a white background).  Too political?  Too stripey?  Not sure!!  But I do think it's going to take a little more planning before I start into the actual cutting and quilting.