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Baby
Quilt
Monday,
January 19, 2004
Ring
Ring
I
pick up my phone and retrieve a voicemail message from my
friend Dan,
telling me that his son Maxwell David Costa Jacobsohn was
born on Friday, January 16th. I talk to him and his wife,
my lovely friend Gwen briefly and left them to babying the
new one.
I
go into baby blanket mode.
Tuesday,
January 20, 2004
Plan
A
Originally, my plan was going to make them a quilt that was
an aerial view of a lake, an orchard, a city, a farm and a
neighborhood, with rivers and streets. Like playmats and carpets
I'd seen. I sketched out a darn cute version months ago. I
started designing an electronic drawing of it to use as a
pattern.
It
sat.
Later,
I thought about the amount of work it ws going to be, considering
the design had a good amount of applique. I was reluctant.
Then
I got the idea to make the whole thing out of polar fleece.
Less work since polar fleece doesn't fray, so I wouldn't have
to worry too much about the applique parts. And it's soft
and it's easy to clean.
Great.
But
then I figured I'd have to buy all new fabric for it and then
I'd have more scraps in my always spilling over fabric cabinet.
Plan
B
Then
I decide to make a cotton quilt out of the copious amounts
of fabric I already have. I really like snowball
quilts, so I opted for that. So tonight I started cutting
100 3 1/2" squares. Conveinent size because that's the
width of my favorite quilt ruler.
And
today I was reading Georgia Bonesteel's Easy
Does It Quilts at the library. Flipping quickly
through the book, I spooted her suggestion to use fleece as
both batting and backing.
Brilliant!
Now I could use my existing cotton fabrics with the
ease of fleece.
Wednesday,
January 21, 2004
Baby
Quilt Progress
Left: The 3.5" blocks in 100+ different fabrics.
I had to go buy a few 1/8 yards of some oranges, since those
were lacking in my fabric stash. Otherwise, I think I had
some great fabrics. I chose the boldest fabric I have and
cropped some print carefully, to make the final product a
sort of "I spy" quilt.
Right: Here's a big bowl of 1.25" squares for the
corners, cut out of basic black cotton.
Left: Here's all of the blocks still strung together
from chain peicing them. Whenever I do chain piece, I marvel
in how little thread I use.
Right: Here's the finished stack of trimmed blocks.
Next step: Ironing. Then the fun of arranging the
blocks!
But first, sweeeet sleeeep.
posted on
1/21/2004 01:47:48 AM
Wednesday,
January 21, 2004
More
Baby Quilt Progress
Top: The newly ironed blocks
Bottom: 100 blocks sewn in pairs and lined up in
the the final order
posted
on 1/21/2004 11:44:05 PM
Friday,
January 23, 2004
Even
More Baby Quilt Progress
Here's the finished center of the quilt. 100 snowball blocks,
each a different fabric and 30" square right now. Next, a
black border, then a black and white striped border, then
another, wider black border. Then the top will be done.
posted
on 1/23/2004 01:42:21 PM
Friday,
January 23, 2004
Finished
Baby Quilt!
Here's the final baby quilt all quilted and signed and all
pesky threads trimmed.
Working with the fleece wasn't too bad. It can stretch around
a bit, so I used lots of safety pins to baste the layers together.
I love that the quilt is very soft with the fleece and that's
it's not too bulky.
I quilted it along the inside and outside edge of the two
black borders (four consecutive squares), and little diamonds
in the corners of the blocks. The only futzy part of the whole
project was machine sewing the diamonds. Mostly because it
was loads of stopping and starting and I tend to scrunch up
my shoulders big time. But it went fairly quickly.
I signed the quilt with fabric paint in small letters on the
alternating 1/4" black and white stripes:
"MAXWELL DAVID COSTA JACOBSOHN - JANUARY 16 2004 - MADE WITH
LOVE BY BRANDY AGERBECK"
I tried to keep it small and worked into the design. Normally,
I would have done it on the black, but the fleece was too
fuzzy to paint on and I thought it would be a bit off to sew
a cotton patch onto the fleece.
Once the paint I used to sign it (with baby's name, birthdate,
and "made with love by Brandy Agerbeck) dries, I'll iron the
fabric paint to set it. Tomorrow morning, I'll wash it, dry
it and put it in the mail! I'm feeling very, very snazzy considering
Dan called me Monday morning to tell me he and Gwen's great
news and it's in the mail tomorrow.
Rock on.
posted
on 1/23/2004 03:07:09 PM
Tuesday,
February 24, 2004
Another Happy Customer*
Remember the baby quilt I made at the end of last month? There's
Mr. Max enjoying in above! I'm learning baby vernacular, but
I hear the quilt is used for "tummy time."
I hope he gets lots of good use and enjoyment out of it!
The whole quilt-making story is here.
*Yes,
it was a gift, no he's not truly a customer.
posted on 2/24/2004 12:48:08
PM
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