Beginner Baby Quilt

I’ve had the good fortune of becoming an aunt several times over. All of you aunts and uncles out there might relate. It’s an exciting role to fill. There’s more family to love, and adorable baby cheeks to pinch. But when there are problems, diapers need to be changed, or the crying won’t stop, you get to give them back to mommy and daddy.

It’s also exciting as it gives me a reason to make something new. Why not make baby a quilt? I thought it sounded like a good idea. Baby quilts are a great introductory quilting project. They’re not too big, don’t require too much fabric, and can be completed in a reasonable amount of time. When creating for a baby, you can also use all the fun, silly and kitchy print fabrics that abound and might not seem adult-appropriate for your other projects.

I used Holly DeGroot of Bijou Lovely‘s Colorblock quilt pattern for this quilt. I like the clean bold lines of this pattern. It’s great to showcase fabric with big prints. However, I found it hard to find the right combination of fabrics. Every time I had four or five coordinating prints, I was stumped by selecting the fifth and sixth. Luckily, husband Mike is really good at picking fabrics and coordinating colors. The ladies at Cambridge Quilt Shop were also really helpful with this. Their suggestion of the brightly striped fabric for the border ties everything in together and is a fun element.

This quilt top came together fairly quickly. If I were to do it again, I would probably make the outside border strips a bit wider than the pattern calls for. This would provide room to trim it to size if you find the columns don’t match up perfectly (like perhaps mine are).

This was the first quilt that I completed on my own, without the benefits of a class or instructor. Holly’s instructions are very clear and the illustrations made it easy to follow along with this pattern. I would highly recommend this pattern to a beginner quilter or to anyone who needs to make a baby quilt in a hurry. The close straight line quilting looks great but was really time consuming. I should have spaced the quilting lines further apart, but once I started there was no turning back.

Also, make sure to check the size of your fabric. My border fabric had an unusually thick selvage edge, leaving me slightly short of the proper yardage. I had to creatively piece together little bits to get enough fabric. I should have purchased  a 1/4 yard more fabric and it would have saved me some headaches. Lesson learned for next time.