My sister asked me to make a baby quilt for a friend. In a moment of weakness, I said, uh, sure. How much fabric do I need, she asked me. Considering the small size, I said about 2 yards plus fabric for the back. She showed up a couple of days later with about 12 yards, none of which more than 2 or 3 fabrics worked together. We looked through my considerable quilting stash but didn't find much more to add to the mix (I don't do baby quilts that often and have avoided adding any flannels to my stash). What is her theme, I asked? She didn't know but was going to go home and look online. When she called me back, she said the colors for the baby were pink and brown. Pink and brown? So, I laid out about 4 possible color combinations to think about of which only one was pink and brown when she showed up the next day with even more fabric! At least this time they had pink and brown colors. However, almost all of the fabric she had bought had a one way direction or lines! (Over all patterns are the best, without linear features and real quilters don't like printed, fake quilt patterns on fabric.) Cutting and sewing are not my strong suits. In fact, I can pretty much say, I don't particularly care for sewing at all. But I like having my own creations.
So after considerable consideration, I came up with this. I first cut the 5 inch blocks and the fabric was cutesy and babyish enough but kind of blah without any pop. So, I decided to fussy cut the rick-rack fabric, with long vertical lines to sew in between the blocks. I fussed alright, because, I am not the best at sewing straight lines and the quilt was going to look bad if the long vertical lines weren't straight. And, lucky for me, I only had to redo one vertical line. I was tormented by how to cut the shorter, rick rack fabric pieces in between the longer vertical pieces because the fabric repeat was close to the width of the block. I decided to hedge my bets by centering the cut on a yellow line since I was pretty sure it would be impossible/I would go insane trying to match the pattern. But, I did cut them all lined up colorwise the same. I'm quite pleased with the baby quilt. If I have enough fabric left over, I want to make a matching bag to go with it.
P.S. The light doesn't do the colors justice but I haven't gotten around to working on a better lighting situation yet.
