Super Simple Baby Quilt 5

One of the things on my to-do list for May was finishing a snuggly baby quilt for the wee man.  For those of you not in New Zealand, I can tell you that it's getting a smidgen chilly in Auckland now.  Not polar vortex chilly, but definitely put-the-fire-on-and-wear-multiple-layers chilly.

I thought the brown binding with mossy splodges was very Seuss-like

Now the wee man has quilts, but not a snuggly, buggly, lined with fluffy candlewick quilt.  The poor deprived little dear.  So I did what all crafty mummys do, and dragged out a jelly roll of Lorax fabrics that I may have bought when I was pregnant.  Good things take time, you know.

I sewed five strips from the jelly roll together to make the non-bordered patches, and trimmed them to 10.5" square.  This meant I got 4 blocks from each set of 5 strips.

For the bordered strips, I sewed three of the jelly roll strips together and trimmed the blocks to 6.5" square.  I got this meant I got 6 of the little blocks from each set of 3 strips.  I bordered the smaller blocks with 2.5" strips of white so that they ended up 10.5" square too.  All done.

Basting - not my friend

The most time was spent mucking around figuring out the layout.

Once it was all done I ummmed and ahhhed about the quilting.  I didn't really want to practice my free motion quilting, but in the end I decided that I should just suck it up and give it a go.  I channeled my inner Leah Day and got going.

I quilted the whole quilt in a pattern Leah Day calls "snake paisley".  Personally I think it looks like echoed flames.  It was okay for a first time, but that's about it.  There are various things that could have made the experience more pleasurable - a supreme slider, a quilting table, some machine quilting gloves, and a little more care.  I think I need to make sure I'm really keen on free motion quilting before I invest more money in gadgets though.

Attempts to take outside photos were thwarted by the rubbish winter light.  Sigh.

It took me about five hours.  It's fair to say that I had the hang of the pattern near the end - however my stitches were not as smooth and lovely as they should be.  Oh well, that is what practice is for.

How are you all?  What have you been up to?  In other news I had purchased the EQ7 quilt design software (for the Mac).  It seems this will be fodder for many blog posts.  Hopefully I use it lots!

Linking up on Friday to Crazy Mom Quilts and Confessions of a Fabric Addict.  Howdy visitors!