One night baby quilt

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I've done many baby quilts in the past--usually a pieced block quilt that I then hand quilt using my lap frame.  I haven't done one in a long time because...they take a long time!  My mom has taken up serious quilting and I wondered if maybe I could get back into it a bit, but in a way that wouldn't add another "not-yet-complete" project to my pile.  A quick internet search of baby strip quilts will yielded lots of inspiration. 

I have a very basic Singer sewing machine, and I didn't hold out much hope that it would be able to do quilting, but with the addition of a $10 Even Feed (Walking) Foot from Amazon, it handled it like a champ! Wow, buy one!


This quilt took me just under 5 hours from cutting to binding--maybe a bit less since I did take a break for dinner and to do a load of laundry. 

I followed the excellent instructions at Thirty Handmade Days and I had zero trouble with the pattern.  I won't put the tutorial here since you can use hers.  I did use my serger to sew all the strips together (no pins!)  instead of my sewing machine.  Also, next time I do this quilt, I would just quilt the along the seam one time.  The double line of quilting took about 90 minutes and my back was tired of leaning over the machine.


This is a good project to use up some of your fabric stash--the owl and alphabet prints I bought new, but the rest were fabrics that I needed to use up.  I'd say this quilt is a casual quilt, with plenty of crooked lines--but its still pretty cute.


The backing will need the most fabric, all the rest you can get away with about 1/3 a yard or less of each kind.  I used 6 different fabrics.  I also used the "cheater binding" method where the you cut the backing about 4 inches bigger than the finished top and then just fold over the back to make the binding.  I managed to not have quite enough backing, so rather than trim down my quilt front (42 inches across)  I made a 4 x 58 inch  strip with 3 of the leftover fabrics and sewed it to the edge of the backing so that my backing was 46x60.  My finished quilt is 42x54 inches.

Baby Quilt...in progress

Pin It A very good friend is expecting her first baby and I wanted to make a quilt. I've done simple pieced quilts before and while they aren't too bad, the strip quilting method makes things much faster. I decided that I wanted a more random/crazy pattern for this quilt.

First, picking the fabric is the hardest part! I went with 6 different coordinating fabrics (about 1/4 yard of each), plus 1.5 yards for the back (I'm making a 45" x 45" square).

Next, I used my rotary cutter (if you don't have one, get one! you won't be sorry) to cut the fabric into strips. I varied the width of the strips from 2-5 inches and then lined them up in an order that I liked. I sewed strips together until I had about a 45 x 45 square.

I forgot to take good pictures of the next step, sorry. But, you pull out the rotary cutter again and cut across the strips so that you end up with one long row of the various squares! (Lots better than cutting out each square and then sewing them all back together).

Next, you take all those nice new strips of square and lay it out on the floor. I decided to put the strips upside down on one row and rightside up on the next.

I do have a set of PVC quilt frames, but for baby quilts, I really prefer this small lap frame (I bought it years ago at House of Fabric and recently found another one at a yard sale). I use quilting safety pins to pin through the quilt top, batting and back so everything stays put. Then I move the lap frame when I need to. This makes the project easy to sit on the couch and work on or take on a road trip or put away. I haven't finished yet, but when I get the binding done I'll take another photo.