Simple & Modern Baby Quilt Tutorial

This month, Kristy at Hopeful Threads and my lovely friend Melissa from SewBitterSweet Designs are teaming up to run a baby love drive of quilts and blankets to be delivered to the local Children's Hospital NICU & PICU. This is a cause that is very dear to my heart as I have spent countless hours in a Children's Hospital during my lifetime. It can be scary to be in a place with loud machines, needles and strangers walking in and out of your room on a continual basis. Providing a small quilt for these patients not only provides comfort and some sense of normalcy to an awful situation for the children, but also comforts the family as well. This token of love gives the patients & their families strength they need to deal with their medical problems.

Anyway, as part of this drive I have written a very easy and modern baby quilt tutorial that measures at 44x44 which is perfect for the PICU and can easily be altered to a smaller size for the NICU. Even if you choose not to follow my pattern, I hope that you take a few hours out of your schedule this month and make a handmade blanket for the children who have to spend their holidays in the hospital instead of playing at home with their families and friends.

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Supplies:

2/3 yard light peach fabric

1 yard dark peach fabric

3/4 yard light gray fabric

3/4 yard dark gray fabric 

Cutting Instructions:

From light peach fabric:

(3) strips 1.5" x width of fabric 

(2) squares 5.75" x 5.75"

From dark peach fabric:

(3) strips 1.5" x width of fabric 

(3) squares 5.75" x 5.75"

Instructions

1. Sew 6 strips of fabric together lengthwise, alternating between light and dark peach. Be sure to press with seams open. Cut into (5) 5.75" x 5.75" squares.

2. Make half square triangles by placing 1 solid piece of light peach fabric & 1 striped square on top of each other right sides together. Draw a line diagonally down the middle of the peach square & sew 1/4" on both side of the lines. Cut on the drawn line.

3. Press each square. Repeat for all of solid squares.

4. Assemble squares in groups of four as shown & sew.

5. Sew blocks together as shown.

6. Place borders. Be creative -- this is an excellent opportunity to use your scraps and make the quilt to whatever size you so desire - improv is the name of the game! 

7. Quilt & bind as desired.

Viola! Finished quilt in under 2 hours!

Pink & Purple.

One day I decided it has certainly been too long since I've spent some quality time with my sewing machine. 

My homework was completed and I had a few hours to spare. What to sew I asked myself? 

While sitting in my studio my eyes fell upon this lovely stack of pinks and purples.

An idea began to form and I decided to cut them into a bunch of squares.

But I couldn't stop there and decided to make them into a bunch of half square triangles instead.

I forgot that half square triangles require a lot of trimming. Especially 127 half square triangles.

But then I began to piece them together.

And that made me happy.

The End.

Blogger's Quilt Festival: Zig-Zag Quilt

It's my favorite time of the year...fall! Which means lots of changing leaves, apple pie, thanksgiving, and then of course Christmas (aka the best holiday ever). But before I go getting ahead of myself, the fall also has one of my favorite blogging events - the blogger's quilt festival. I can spend hours looking through the entries on Amy's site, but usually don't have time. However, with the lovely Frankenstorm or Hurricane Sandy as she is known, it looks like I might have hours to spend indoors. So bring on the quilts!

After much hemming and hawing, I settled on sharing with you my zig-zag quilt I made in celebration of the birth of my cousin's first child.

I really wanted to create a bold, graphic quilt that featured pink paired with some unexpected colors. I think that the magenta and golden oranges are really framed nicely against my favorite Kona Coal.  Because I wanted the color to be the focus of the quilt, I paired some tone-on-tone prints with a few solids for some visual interest...and as a fun surprise when you looked closer. I backed it with solid magenta and used a golden orange binding.

To make the chevrons, I used half square triangles that I pieced together. I really do enjoy working with half square triangles -- and find it isn't so bad if I trim and prep a bunch of them at once. =)

I quilted it on my machine using straight lines echoing the zig-zags. I really like how it turned out, and it gives a nice touch of texture to the quilt - especially in the gray areas.

Hope you like it! And don't forget to check out the other awesome entries for the Blogger's Quilt Festival.

Zig-Zag Quilt Stats:
Measurements: Baby Blanket about 36" x 52"
Special Techniques used: half square triangle piecing
Quilted by: me! on my lovely sewing machine -- echoed the zig-zags.
Best Category: Baby Quilt/Quilt Photography
Quilt Entry #: 411

Quilts for Cancer: Octagonal Orb Block

I may or may not have over booked myself quilting wise this month. Does anyone else ever have this problem?

Anyway, during a few free moments this week I decided to work on my first ever block for the Quilts for Cancer Bee I'm a part of. I love the idea of making quilts for people affected by cancer...sadly it's such a widespread disease in the world, that almost everyone knows someone who is fighting (or fought) a battle with cancer.

Marta (who just started up her own blog by the way -- From Marta with Love -- be sure to go leave her some love!)  kicked the bee off with an excellent choice -- Elizabeth Hartmen's octagonal orb block. I've been itching to try this block out, so to say I was excited might be an understatement.

I've noticed that people sure are loving the spring green/aqua/gray color combo these days (we all know how I feel about gray!) and Marta is no exception. I especially like how she wanted to use quilter's linen in place of a traditional solid. I think linen adds so much texture to a quilt, and am planning on using it extensively in a future project.

Elizabeth's instructions were easy to understand (as always), and I love that it made such a large block - finished at 16.75 inches by 16.75 inches. The blocks were a bit time consuming to make but are an excellent use of scraps and I imagine an entire quilt with these might be in my somewhat distant future.  If you want to make your own Octagonal Orb (and you know you do) check out the instructions here.

Sneak Peek

I'll give you three guesses as to what I've been working on today but you'll only need one...

Charity catch up

While I have a lot of quilts to work on, I found myself wanting to finish up a few projects I was in the middle of when the power went out. First up were my blocks for Sarah's quilts for foster kids:

Next up were my blocks for Caroline's cancer charity quilt. I made these in memory of my grandmother who died from lung cancer when I was a junior in high school. 

Finally I had sketched out a million ideas for my block for the 3x6 Bee I'm participating in via Flickr. After much sketching and thinking, I think I finally decided on a block. What do you think?

Manic Monday

One of my good friends is having a baby girl soon and since I've been dying to make a plus quilt for awhile now, pushed all sensible thoughts out of my head (like how I have a ton of things to do the next few weeks) and got busy on this baby quilt. After sewing like mad this weekend while my husband studied, I managed to finally get this all ready to quilt today. Here are a few shots of the front and back...and here's hoping I manage to finish it before her shower this weekend (yikes!)

Now the question is, how to quilt it?


I'm linking up to Sew Modern Monday at Canoe Creations...be sure to go check out what everyone else has been up to