Baby Throw Quilt

Throw Size Baby Quilt

I have been working on a lot of projects lately and the one I am posting about today is the Throw Size Baby Quilt that I just finished for my cousin's new baby girl. 

This is how it started: My cousin had all of her friends and family send her an 8" piece of fabric to be created into a quilt.  I received everything from t-shirt pieces, dress pieces, cotton fabric, a hand-made doilie, ties and lots of other different types of fabrics; it totalled about 80 something pieces. 

The hardest part of the entire quilt was first trying to figure out just how I was going to piece this quilt together with so many different prints and styles of fabrics.  While looking through Pinterest (my favorite addiction) I found a quilt made of three different size squares and thought it was perfect! The change that I made was to place the smaller squares on the top and the bigger pieces on the bottom.  My next mission was to gather all the pieces and decide how to group the pieces together.  I did my best to group all of the pieces into groups of four to make it a little bit easier.  Some of the pieces were used once while others were used twice to make the quilt look more visually pleasing. 

After all of the pieces were grouped I had to decide which groups were going to be small, medium or large.  Once this was determined I could then begin my next step of cutting all the fabric pieces to the right size; 4.5", 7.5" and 14.5" squares.  When all the squares were cut I laid them out on my table to make sure that everything was in a good place, and if they weren't I just went ahead and rearranged them until I thought it looked good.  Once I was happy with the layout I started preparing the pieces that either needed applique or interfacing.  I had a square with a tie that needed to be stitched in place, as well as a couple badge pieces that needed to be stitched down as well.  Because I had some t-shirt and dress pieces they had to have lightweight fusible interfacing placed on the backside of the fabric to help stabilize the pieces.  My mother also contributed to the preparing of the quilt, she took one of the big pieces to her embroiderer and had the baby's initials and date of birth placed on a the square.

Now that all of the pieces were placed in a good position and prepared for stitching I was able to start piecing the top of the quilt. It was easiest for me to start with the small squares, therefore I went from top to bottom.  First I stitched the small groups of four together, ending up with 12- 4 square patches that started the first four rows of the quilt top. 

After the 4 square patches were complete I began stitching the top rows; combining the patches with the 7.5" squares.

When the first four rows were stitched I did the same with the medium squares; making 6- 4 square patches.

Then I stitched the rows; combining the 4 square patches with the 14.5" squares.

Once all the rows were complete, I then stitched all of the rows together to finish the quilt top.  When I finished putting the entire quilt top together I placed the hand-made doilie onto the lower large squares.  I used Heat 'n Bond to hold it in down then stitched it into place. 
The finished quilt top was 56"x70" which meant that I had to piece the backing horizontally because I could not find a cotton wide enough at my Joann Store.  My husband actually helped me pick out the backing fabric because there was so many options with the fact that there was no theme to the top that I couldn't decide what to get.  He picked a really pretty light pink with white leaves, I was very impressed :-). 

Once the back was pieced I laid a sheet on the floor and taped it tight, then laid the backing down and the batting on top of that.  I used a spray adhesive to hold the two pieces together and made sure there were no wrinkles and then laid down the quilt top; I used the spray adhesive to hold the top and batting together as well.  Due to the fact that I was trying free motion quilting I decided to do a little bit of pinning to be sure the layers would be held together. 
I made the decision to free motion quilt a little late so trying to find a darning foot that I didn't have to wait 7-10 days to receive was a little frustrating.  Thankfully a store in town carried a darning foot that fit my machine and was not overpriced.  Yay for me!  By way of Pinterest I found this Free Motion Quilting tutorial that helped me immensely.  I practiced a little bit on some scraps of fabric, the hardest part had to be getting my thread tension right so that the threads locked in the middle.  Once I found the right tension I took a deep breath and started on my quilt.  I was able to finish quilting in about 3 sittings, and I think it turned out pretty well for being my first free motion quilt (I really wish I would have taken a closeup of the quilting but you can kind of see it here).

Once it was completely quilted I squared the quilt and got the binding started.  Somebody had sent a really nice night-time star print that I thought would be perfect for the binding since enough was sent.

I used a All-by-Machine quilt binding method.  Using a great Quilting Calculator app I figured out how many strips I needed to cut.  I prefer to do machine binding because I'm not great with hand sewing and I have the machine so why not use it.  After the binding was complete I washed the quilt in a "Free" detergent and used a "Free" softener in the dryer, since this is intended for a baby. 

And there you have it a Throw Size Baby Quilt:

Thanks for stopping by... see you again soon!