Baby Quilts Are Tops And There Is A Pieced Back

Most of the project fabrics

 Our daughter Nicole, who lives in London, announced that she is pregnant. She told us, "It's a girl!" Her baby is due to arrive mid-March. 

Her news was super exciting because this is the daughter who always stated kids were not in her future. Miracles do happen! We are over the moon to be grandparents for a third and precious time! Perhaps, our youngest granddaughter will become a quilter!

One block ready to stitch

Of course, I sent a quilt home with Nicole at Thanksgiving to ensure that there would be a baby quilt available should her daughter arrive earlier than planned! While Nicole was visiting, I picked out some flannel fat quarters that I had on hand. I asked if she thought her daughter would enjoy a quilt made out of those fabrics/colors.

Two tops

Nicole took a look at the fabric. With a raised eyebrow, she said,  "you chose a fabric with flowers?" (Nicole is not a fan of any type of floral found in a print!) I told her to take a closer look as there was a fabric printed with butterflies; but, there were no florals in the mix of flannels. She did take a second look and agreed!

The pattern I decided to make came from Kat and Cat Quilts and her Covered in Love block
drive. I cut strips. From there, I subcut the pieces to make a block. I decided that I would make two quilts so that one quilt would always be available for use. 

Pieced back

My husband's grandmother gave me two flannel quilts when I was expecting. It was so great to be able to wash one while still having one available for comforting! Those quilts were always in use!

The blocks finished at twelve inches. I decided that a 48 inch square quilt or a four by four layout would work great. As I finished blocks, I'd put them on the design wall. 

Scraps

This process allowed me to see the quilt come together. The design wall view helped me equally distribute the prints and colors around the quilt top. 

I pulled a few scraps that worked well for some of the shorter pieces of the block. After all, I had to have a few pieces of my friend Martha's flannels in this quilt. Martha made a lot of baby quilts in her quilting career!

I chain pieced, stitching two like blocks at a time. Of the finished blocks, I placed one on the design wall and the other I placed in a pile for the second quilt. I did cut the binding for both quilts after I had completed piecing the quilt tops.

I pieced the leftovers into one long back. I'm planning to longarm these quilts  both at the same time. Longarming two quilts at once will be different! I haven't tried that yet; but, I did make my back extra wide to accommodate both tops! I'm thinking that a yellow polyester thread would be a good thread  for the quilting and that a circle pattern would give the piece nice texture. 

After all of that piecing, my pile of scraps was small! I'll use the bits for string piecing and maybe the larger chunks will work for corner squares in another project. I was surprised at how few scraps remained from the 11 yards of abric that I pre washed at the beginning of the project! I love how colorful the fronts and the backs are.  

This was goal number eight on my January list. Perhaps next month,  I'll quilt them.