the baby/toddler quilts that started the machine quilting love!

i posted some sneak peaks of these baby quilts back in august, but i realized the other day that i'd never gotten around to actually posting full shots! see what i mean about not posting half of what i made in 2010?

i was asked by a friend to make a quilt for her new grandson, and since she's done so much for me over the years, i immediately agreed, and starting thinking about ideas. money was a bit tight at the time, so i started out using fabric from my stash, though i picked up a few more blues along the way (there are too many different shades of blue out there!).

i decided to make wonky stars, and i wish i could remember which specific tutorial i used, but there are several good ones out there!



i did two different colour tones of stars, lights and darks, though they all have the same background fabric.






i used a striped flannelette for the backing, and pieced the binding.


i added a pieced strip down the back, using leftover fabrics from the front.


i machine embroidered on some of the pieces in the strip, to make the quilt labels.







after i finished the quilt for the new grandson, i started feeling bad that i hadn't made a quilt for his older brother when he was born a few years ago, so i went rummaging through my stash again.

i found this super fun flannelette with a tattoo print that i'd bought several years ago to make a gift out of - i'd even bought the matching red flannelette for the backing. it also has the added coolness of glow in the dark bits in the design!

i wanted to keep leland's quilt very simple, because i didn't want to break up the tattoo designs. but i didn't want it to be too simple either!



i decided to pick up the red and blue details in the design with matching flannelette borders along the top and bottom, and a strip of 9patch blocks across the quilt.





i quilted it fairly heavily, and i absolutely love how the flannelette handles the quilting.



isn't that yummy?



the back is primarily red flannelette, but i added a strip of red cotton across it, with a few bits of the olive green binding material added in. flannelette doesn't really like being embroidered on, because the weave is so much looser, so the cotton made adding the labels much easier.





i hadn't liked how prominent the made by label on robert's quilt was, so for leland's i used thread in the same colour as the fabric. i like this effect much better - it includes basic info, which i think is important, but keeps the focus on who the quilt is for, and who it was received from, which is much more important!




here's a photo of the whole quilt, with me in it for scale! this was at the august quilt guild meeting, and it was taken by the fabulous sonja, who takes amazing pictures of all of our meetings. (you should totally check out the vancouver modern quilt guild's flickr group for all of the eye candy!)

prior to making these quilts, i'd primarily just stitched in the ditch on quilts. i took a class on stippling, and sucked royally, and so i just stuck with what i knew. after making them, i completely fell in love with the more dense machine stitched lines, and felt a lot more comfortable stitching across large expanses of fabric.

which is why i'm slightly obsessed with quilting now. just slightly. ;)