The evolution of a baby quilt

Ok, now that my daughter has seen Patric's quilt, you can too.

Remember this? He was the first teddy bear.

I think this little guy was third.

Do you notice the fabric surrounding the blocks? I planned on adding a one inch border around all the blocks using the colour that each teddy is wearing. I didn't know whether I wanted to use orange...

or yellow. I did know that I wanted the teddy to wear overalls, sunglasses and have a pail and shovel.

So, you see, I chose the yellow. I thought it was a brighter, lighter colour and went much better with all the other colours. These blocks are laid out on different grays because I was trying to choose sashing. I hemmed, and I hawed but in the end, I brought all my grays and all the blocks with their background fabrics with me one evening to show the ladies that I quilt with. They helped me choose the right one.

If you make the photo bigger you will notice that the upper right teddy (the first teddy bear) has had a few additions and so has the little girl bear. This quilt was started before Patric was born and no one knew if he was going to be a boy or a girl. I told my daughter that I could make another teddy and keep the little girl bear for a future quilt. She said no, there are little girl bears so she stayed in.

I'll show you the finished quilt soon. It needs to be bound.

An old quilt

I did show you a new baby quilt last week and now I have an old quilt to share.

It is a scrap quilt. Made for my second son, Eric, who will be 31 at the end of July. I started quilting in the fall of 1980 after taking a night school class. At the time I was pregnant with my third child, a girl, Maili. It was a 10 week course and I figured that I would miss the last class but she came early and I missed the last two classes. I don't know when I made this quilt. Eric was child number 4 and one of three who did get a quilt made by me. Quilting was not in our family.

 This is the back of the quilt. Most of the fabrics were cotton but I suspect that some may have had polyester blends too. The batting is polyester and you can see it peeking out at the top.

 I have no idea where this baby donkey fabric came from but I think it's cute.

It was hand quilted and as you can see, it did not stand up to wear. I am thinking of fixing it and giving it to Eric if, and when, he has a little one of his own. For now, it will stay with me. For a while Eric used it as a dresser scarf on top of his dresser.

I have another old quilt I will share in a bit. This one, unfortunately, was not signed or dated but it was made between 1982 and 1986.

Seriously? In this day and age?

We have all heard of the bullying in schools but this really does take the cake. At a supposedly Christian school too. I won't copy and paste the article but I will put up the link.


http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/dailybrew/student-pulled-n-y-school-being-mocked-canadian-192130420.html



So sad.

New quilt

This has now been delivered.

 Staggered Coins is how I refer to it since it could have been a coin quilt if I had left all the prints in one column.

The backing has Mother Goose fabric. Just perfect for a brand new little baby girl named Aylin.

I am linking up with the Needle and Thread Network. Pop on over to see what other Canucks are up to this week.

I'm also linking up with Esther's WOW.

Worth reading

For anyone who likes quilts, loves quilts and/or appreciates quilts and their history, please read Esther Aliu's latest blog post. It's here.

Esther has re-created a quilt - a true vintage quilt and if you wish, you can make one too. All you have to do is join her yahoo group - it's free and therefore, the pattern will be free too, for a limited time. There is some mystery surrounding the quilt, where it is today, if indeed it still exists. It was shown in a 1956 copy of Patchwork by Averil Colby.

And since a blog post is not truly complete unless it has a photo, I shall show you this.

This is just one of the beautiful bouquets I received on my birthday last year. The flowers are all gone but the gorgeous photos remain...