Baby Quilt

This was originally posted on my old MommaQuilts blog.

I can't do anything simple. I have a history of not finishing several quilts that I've started. In fact, none of my children have a quilt made by me. The problem is that my ideas for all that I want to do get out of hand.

So I decided that this time around I'd go simple. I found a nice disappearing nine patch pattern and got a good portion of the quilt done in no time. But since I was working with scraps, I didn't have enough of the given fabric to create a quilt the size I wanted. In retrospect it would probably have been the perfect size for a baby, but I wanted it big enough to be used throughout the toddler years.


So I got the bright idea that I would use Tonya's letters to add a Bible verse to the quilt. I learned a lot from this project.
Most importantly, there should be a lot of contrast between your background fabric and your letter fabric. You can see that when I was finished, I couldn't read what I had "written". Luckily, someone in my bee gave me the idea of outlining the letters. This helped some, but I probably should have used a heavier weight thread for the outlining.




Also, be careful with stripes. Actually stripes probably don't matter as long as there is more contrast as I mentioned above. But they didn't work for me because my stripes had white in them.

And try to avoid cheap fabric. I now know why I got these scraps for free. It took me so long to get this done, that something got spilled on it somewhere along the way. I had to wash it and some of the thin fabric shredded. This is probably also a result of my poor sewing skills.


Another big thing for me is my lack of whimsy. I chose Tonya's letters because they match my idea of not needing a perfect quilt. I like the idea of free handing. But I learned that when I put the idea in practice, it irritated me that different letters where different sizes. It made it hard for me to predict how things would line up. I've concluded that I will have to do a bit of standardization in creating my letters in the future.


I don't know when I'll get this project completed, but I'm hoping that it will be soon. We'll see if it ends up getting used much. I'll keep you posted.