For the past few weeks I have been working on a new baby quilt. My sister Laura is expecting her second in October. We don’t know if she’s having a boy or a girl, but the quilt I’m making her would work well for either. I got it from Shots and Stripes by Kaffe Fassett and didn’t change much but the size.
His shot cottons are so soft and easy to quilt. I made a baby quilt for my son using them and it is my favorite quilt, just because of how it feels to touch. This quilt is square, 51” x 51”, because I think it’s a good size for a baby, but big enough to use in play. I love that these stars really do twinkle!
It took me some time to piece the top. The stars are not at all difficult, but there are quite a few of them. Once I got a system in place it didn’t take too much time. I used the no waste flying geese method for the points. There are lots of tutorials around for that. Its fast and, well, no waste!
The quilting is proving to be one of the trickiest parts. I wanted to do some dense quilting and really make some beautiful texture. I have some pearl cotton in jewel tones to quilt the stars and thought I’d like to use some sashiko patterns in the alternating squares. That’s not going to work. I tried a small square of it and found that it really detracted from the stars. Next I tried just straight line quilting with some of the bright thread. This is also very distracting. I have a grey thread that I’m going to switch to now. I need to decide whether to do something decorative with it or very simple and de-emphasize the quilting. I’m hoping to finish quilting it by the baby’s due date in mid-October.
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