I am OBSESSED with quilting and I want to quilt every piece of fabric that I see right now. When my friend, Wendy, had her baby back in February, I was just coming off of working 12 hour days plus morning (noon and night) sickness, so I didn’t get to make anything for her super-adorable baby, Ben. When I am shopping for cute, modern, prints online I almost always overbuy for later, and I realized I have a ton of fabric left from my nursery. I decided to experiment and try making a stroller-sized mod blanket for little Ben.
As you can see, I don’t take much time planning my designs out:
I decided to use Alexander Henry’s “2D Zoo” and “Entertaining Elephants”, Michael Miller’s “Disco Dots”, and an Essex linen in lime. The back was mostly light blue Minky Dot, but I didn’t have quite enough, so I did a wide “Disco Dots” border. The front was free-motion quilted, but my meandering is quite far apart and loose, because I wanted to keep it simple and not too crinkled.
I borrowed (stole) Oh Fransson’s idea of appliqueing a felt animal to the lower corner of the blanket. An elephant seemed fitting, since they are in both main fabrics. To make a template for the elephant, I found the image online and printed it out in the size I wanted. The applique is ironed on with very light weight fusable (Lite Steam a Seam 2) and then satin stitched on using the buttonhole setting on my sewing machine.
From start to finish this took me a half day, so it was very satisfying to have results quickly. Not sure how many hours, but I didn’t begin until 2pm when the electricians redoing our wiring left and I wear out early, since I am 32 weeks pregnant.
Here is the finished product. I can’t wait to make more for all the upcoming babies!!
Kelly O. says
this is gorgeous! do you have any tips you could share from your experience of quilting with Minky..I’d really like to back a quilt in Minky but don’t know what i’d be getting myself into
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