Baby Quilt

*If you are my little brother or his lovely wife… please stop reading now.  You can come back and read once my package gets to your house.  The rest of you, read on!*

My brother and sister-in-law welcomed their first child into the world earlier this week.  Archer is the first grandchild for my parents, so his arrival is a pretty big deal.  I decided that a handmade baby quilt was the perfect way to welcome Archer to the family.  I started looking for patterns online and came across a pattern I loved by Amy Butler.  She has loads of free patterns on her website.  Go check it out if you’re looking to make a quilt.  The pattern was for a queen size bed, so AutoCAD and I had a little fun re-sizing the quilt to baby-size.

My next challenge was ordering fabric online.  Thankfully, my mom did a little reconnaissance for me and found out where my sister-in-law had purchased her fabric for the nursery curtains.  The lovely Stitch Stash Diva helped me pick out the perfect fabrics for the quilt, then sent them my way!

Fabrics and a new rotary cutter blade in hand, I started cutting…

…and cutting some more.

Then, I sewed…

… and sewed…

… and sewed even more.  Finally, I had a stack of finished blocks. 

Now, I had to cut them into perfect squares.

Done! 

Next step – arranging the squares for the front of the quilt.

And more sewing…

and some more sewing (I used almost two spools of thread before all was said and done!).

Once the front was finished, I added the batting and the back and got to quilting. 

The rest of the quilt had gone pretty smoothly, but I am NOT good at quilting.  Ugh.

I had to take a break for a few days after I got the quilting done.  One, because my fingers were tired from all the pinning and sewing.  Two, because Archer hadn’t made his debut, and, therefore, I didn’t know his name yet!  As soon as he was born, I stitched a welcome message into the back of the quilt.

Then, I trimmed everything to fit.  There was a small casualty from the rotary blade – those things are razor sharp!  Yes Mom, I know it’s an actual razor.

Finally, I finished the edges of the quilt using the super-awesome-mother-approved method of rolling the edges.  Professional quilters… just ignore this part.

The finished quilts looks pretty good if I do say so myself.

I folded everything up and tied it with a cute bow. 

Now, I just have to wait patiently while I makes it’s way across the ocean and half a country.  I’m counting on my brother and his wife being too tired to check the blog before their package arrives.  Sorry if I spoiled the surprise guys.  I was excited to show everyone what I’ve been working on for the last two weeks!