When my sister announced that she was expecting, I suffered a bout of
what can only be described as crafting paralysis. Don't get me wrong,
there are many knitting patterns and quilt ideas that I'd squirreled
away in the lizard part of my brain for making for a future niece or
nephew (knitted bear suit! quilted growth chart!), but now that one was
on their way nothing seemed good enough for my own, tiny kin. I think I
started and did not complete at least two other quilts and a crocheted
blanket before I hit upon my final quilt idea.
To be
completely honest, this quilt wasn't intended to be for my nephew from
the get go. In a post-committee meeting frenzy of making, I gathered my
scraps and took inspiration from
Oh, Frannson's Charm Square's Baby quilt. The rainbow stripes include civil war reproductions, 30s repro
prints from the first fabric I ever bought, scraps from the swap table
at
quilt guild, a
few solids, and leftovers from various other quilts. I knew I had the
beginnings of something good, but it didn't seem like enough of a
statement.
I wanted to use a neutral from the sashing, and inspired by this
amazing rainbow quilt from Red Pepper Quilts,
I
really wanted to use Alexander Henry Heath. I managed to find a
single yard in metal on etsy (at the time all I could find elsewhere was
black) but once I got it I wasn't completely happy with how it looked
next to the rainbow stripes. So I added a super skinny sashing of
off-white between the two. Much better! That's when this became the
nephew quilt, although until he was born nobody knew what sex he would
be.
For
the back I pieced some improvised scrappy log cabins, sashed them in
the leftovers of the heath (I had maybe 6 square inches of scraps
leftover from the yard by the time I was done) and added a skinny white border to echo the front.
Then I used a solid grey to fill the rest of the space, I believe Moda
silver but my memory has apparently upped and left my noggin.
I
had toyed with the idea of finally learning free motion quilting to use
on this quilt, and I tried a few practice runs but eventually chickened
out. Instead I did some really dense straight line quilting, and
although it's hard to spot unless you look very closely, on the front
the threads passing through each stripe match the colour. In the bobbin I consistently had a light grey.
I auditioned many fabrics for the binding. I was almost
convinced I was going to use a grey pastel stripe but was sure it
looked to feminine. So I went with green polka dots. It's growing on me.
Finally, a few hours after he was born, I embroidered on my nephew's birthday and my new moniker.
I met my nephew a few days ago when he was just over two weeks old. So cute, so tiny! I'm going to enjoy being an Aunty.
That is an adorable quilt. Your nephew is going to love it. Well done for getting it finished so soon after the birth. My nephew is still waiting for his quilt and he's 9 months old!
ReplyDeleteI finished the quilt about a week before he was born, I only embroidered it the day of his birthday and then washed it! I'm nothing if not organized. At least with this!
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