craftlog

Since Amy posted her baby present, here’s the quilt I made for Becket, I mean the baby ;)

I know that yellow and gray is a kind of weird color scheme for a baby, but I think it works, particularly knowing the family. The cool yellow/white/gray geometric print is actually a huuuuuge curtain I found on sale at Anthropologie. That’s the fabric for the back of the quilt too. I think I might make a dress out of the rest of it.

So I thought I’d share my instructions in case anyone else is interested, and to show off the clever trick I came up with to get this done in time for the shower (though, for all I know, I might well have just rederived some well known quilting method, but I *felt* clever anyway). As you’re reading through it, you might think it sounds crazy because, get this, you sew seams and then rip them out later. Weird, I know, but it saves major time and makes all the seams come out much squarer. I call it loop piecing.

All seam allowances are ¼ inch.

1. You’ll need 9 coordinating fabrics that can alternate. Cut 5 inch wide strips from each, the width of the bolt (use 45 inch wide fabric, not 36).
2. Decide what order you want the fabrics, and sew strips together along long sides, right sides together. Iron seams.
3. Sew last strip to first strip, right sides together, to create a tube.
4. Square it up so the seams all match and slice into 8 loops, each 5 in wide. You should have enough extra fabric that you can cut off the selvages for a clean edge on both ends.
5. Using a seam ripper, open a different seam of each loop. Iron again.
6. Arrange the strips so you get diagonals of each fabric.
7. Pin adjacent strips, right sides together, to help make the corners match up. Sew. Iron again.
8. Cut backing fabric and batting 1 in larger all around than quilt top. Layer.
9. I tied this one with little embroidery thread x’s at the junctions, but you can quilt it or tie it, whatever you want.
10. Bind by your favorite method (mine is to just fold the binding over and zigzag to catch everything at once). I made my own binding for this since I couldn’t find the exact color of gray to match. (FYI, I highly recommend the clover binding tools. I have a couple of generic ones in other sizes, but now that I know how much better the clover ones are, I am actually going to replace my nonclover ones. Really, it’s like night and day.)