Ellie's Quilt

My friend S recently had an adorable little girl named Elizabeth Eleni (Ellie) in October. This is the quilt I made for S's baby shower.

Ellie's Quilt

Ellie's Quilt in progress

Started: 10th September 2013
Finished: 5th October 2013
Size: crib size 102 x 142 cm = 40" x 56"
Quilt top: I roughly followed this pattern:  Bricks in Bloom by Tracey Jacobsen of traceyjay quilts. I used Heather Bailey Fresh Cut fabrics from a couple of fat quarters. Machine pieced on my little Singer.
Backing: pieced from Jungle Babies panel and print by Patty Reid designs, which I picked up from a bargain bin at a quilt shop in Pennsylvania for about $3 back in 2009. It's been sitting around waiting for a baby quilt ever since and there was only *just* enough of it.
Binding: 2.25" double fold binding, hand stitched to front.
Batting: Hobbs 80/20 poly/cotton blend.
Quilting: Horizontal lines in the ditch and at a 45° angle with Guterman 100% cotton thread.

Quilt back: some puckers

This is the very first quilt I've made all by myself without any help from anyone, whatsoever. As you can see in the photo above, I'm not very good at basting all by myself yet. I ended up with some serious folds in the backing fabric; they were simply too big to be called puckers!

Embroidered label

Quilted and trimmed and ready to bind

I had a bit of a near fail getting the quilt done in time for S's baby shower and was doing some desperate last minute applique-ing in the train, only to realise that I'd forgotten some of the bits- namely, the trunks for my stylised trees and the big E for Ellie that was meant to go next to them. This resulted in me dashing to John Lewis, buying some ribbon and actually finishing the quilt right there in the shop. Luckily, JL has a sewing corner in its haberdashery department and the ladies that work there were absolutely lovely and more than happy to lend me some scissors.

The tree trunks did get sewn on in the end or rather at the very last minute (see below) but the E for Ellie didn't make it onto the quilt, unfortunately. Here's the finished product. Unfortunately, I only have photos taken with my crappy blackberry so they're not very good.

Ellie's Quilt: finished

I also made S some fleece backed burp cloths and a swaddling blanket, which I used to figure out how to bind a quilt before ruining the actual quilt. This was super easy and made a great present for the baby shower. I'm sure I'll be making them again for the next new baby. I bought this pack of 6 muslin squares from John Lewis, cut each square into thirds, layered them on top of each other with Heather Bailey's super soft Freshcut paisley dot fleece fabric and self bound them. After doing two I got bored and really needed to get a move on with the actual quilt so I didn't bother backing the remaining 4 squares.

Burp cloths and a fleecy swaddling blanket

The swaddling blanket is made from two layers of Aqua Rose Bud flannel from ladysewandsew, bound with Heather Bailey's Freshcut Crest in red. Making this took less than an hour. I meant to embroider Ellie's name on one of the corners but I forgot. Whoops.

Quilting love,
me x