A weft yarn

A quilt for a baby - cot quilt

Last year in 2010 some friends of ours were due to have a baby. As I had completed the beginner's quilting course and made a quilt for my father, I decided to try my hand at another quilt. I managed to sew a very simple baby cot quilt - just strips. We knew that our friends were having a baby boy so the colours were easy to select.

I sewed the quilt top together in two short sittings and here it is ironed and ready for the quilting.

I managed to put the walking foot on correctly this time but still, after doing the machine quilting on an even simpler scale than quilt I made for my father, I think I'll be exploring hand quilting for my next project. Perhaps it's my old machine (a Bernina 801 which I love) or it's my technique - either way - I just don't enjoy shoving the three layers of stuff through my machine and ending up with pretty wonky stitching at the end of it. Machine quilting is the only bit of the whole process I haven't enjoyed, so that tells me something. I have decided that my next quilting project will be on a much larger scale.

 

Dad's quilt - Beginners quilt

In High School, many many years ago, in a lived experience far far away, I sewed myself a single bed quilt. This quilt followed me around the world and for thirty odd years (and they were odd) I used it as "watching TV" quilt. It finally fell apart in late 2009. I couldn't bring myself to throw it away. After all, it had been my constant companion since I was a teenager. Instead, in 2010 I decided to enter again this interesting world of fabric and comforting blanket type things. The first thing I did was enroll in a course at my local fabric store and begin a very simple lap quilt which I intended for my father, who in his 85th year had of late been feeling the cold. I was thinking of the room that he spent a lot of time in when I choose these colours.

It was a very simple beginners design. Square blocks sewn together into a row with an accent strip and then accent strips sewn to the top of that row and then the rows sewn together. I was quite impatient in my sewing and didn't take a lot of care with accuarcy and lining everything up. I also didn't buy a quarter inch foot until long after I'd finished this quilt. Then, when I started quilting it I put my walking foot on incorrectly. So, all in all, I learned a lot about what not to do. Still, I enjoyed myself and wanted to get better at this quilting thing.

I cut the backing too small and had to add bits to it. I had always intended the backing to look a bit patchworky. I was drawing inspiration from Amy Karol's Bend the rules quilt. But seriously, did it need to look this patchworky?

Anyway, I love my father and I hope it gave him a little bit of warmth on his legs. Unfortunately I didn't manage to get it to him until well after winter - 2010 was a crazy busy year for me. It got there eventually and when the parcel arrived my Dad got on the phone and said thanks for the "laptop", then he laughed at his own joke. He always liked to be up on things, my Dad.