Two new Baby Quilts

A few years ago I made a quilt for my friend Ky, in anticipation of the birth of her first child, a son. They’ve used it and loved it since he was born and now I got a chance to make her family another baby quilt; this time for her daughter. As Ky was busy changing the nursery from blue to pink, I was trying to come up with a girl’s quilt that wasn’t too girly.

I was determined to use fabric from my “stash” and I’m not really a pink kind of person, which means I did not have any pinks…so I was trying to find something that’s feminine and fun, without pink. I realized I had quite a bit of red, in different shades, and so decided on a rose- and-cream kind of quilt, using scrappy reds on an off white background.

Here’s what I made:

The pattern is called “stepping stones” or “garden stones” depending on where you look, and it’s fun and easy to make.

Here it is with the binding:


The next challenge was the backing. I always like to make the backing a totally different type of color and style so the recipient will, in effect, have two quilts. As the front is fairly monochromatic, I wanted the back to be colorful, but as it is for a baby, I looked for something fun and child-friendly.
And here was an obstacle. When my kids were little I had tons and tons of child-themed fabrics. But now that the girls are both teenagers, I could not find anything. I dug deeper.

I found scraps of children’s fabrics, but nothing large enough to use for a backing, and not enough to make a new patchwork piece to use as a backing.

Finally, I looked in my UFO cupboard. And there I found this:

I must have bought it years ago for a project I was planning, but that project never came to fruition and, honestly, I don’t even remember what it was. So I used the fabric for this new project.

Kayden’s quilt was done and ready for the baby shower we were organizing for Ky and then, a couple of weeks before the shower, I learned that another colleague was joining the party, and she has a new baby, who would also be attending.

Time for a new quilt!

This one had to be quick, and I decided on strips. I had several different shades of Batik fabric left over from a different project and some left over white fabric (white on white technically). I made her this:

But again, I was stuck on the backing. Seeing as how I was almost foiled by the backing of Kayden’s quilt, I broke down and went to the fabric store (woe is me!) to get backing fabric for Leah’s quilt. I found this:

I also used this fabric as the binding and quilted the blanket with green thread (which you can see in the close up picture):



It actually works to tie the two quilts together, which I didn’t think of until they were both done…

We had the shower, and it was festive, and chatty (and the cake was delicious). And both mamas liked the quilts

Next up,  a post about a Dr. Seussian quilt.