31 Days - Day 6: Simple things are the best

Some friends from church had a surprise pregnancy - their first - after the prospective mom turned forty. The baby shower was one of the funniest I'd been to, filled with jokes, gags and lots of love for the couple and their soon to be arriving daughter.

So, another baby quilt.

Kara's baby quilt

Year: Around 1987
Size: Crib (45 x 60)
Fabrics: Primarily cotton. The prints (pink, blue and ecru) are all the same print, just in different colorways. The solids are most likely cotton broadcloth.
Pattern: A basic straight furrows setting of a sequence of eight different fabrics. I think the pattern may have been in one of the first quilt books I had.
Binding: This quilt is pillowcased - the quilt is layered batting, quilt top right side up, quilt back right side down. Sew around the edges, leaving a fairly large section unsewn on one side, to allow the quilt to be turned right side out. This makes it easier to include the eyelet ruffle around three sides of the quilt. There are other ways to do it, but this is the quickest.
Quilting: Hand quilted with diagonal lines through all the blocks, Baptist fan quilting in the border.

I absolutely loved this quilt. The batting is a lightweight polyester, and the quilt draped beautifully. I love the colors, and the way the quilting really popped (by this point my hand quilting had really improved - much smaller, more even stitches).

When the new mom opened the package, she was very excited. She insisted it was too good to use, and she would put it away to keep safe.

Those were, perhaps, the saddest words I could hear.

My quilts are meant to be used. That includes being the target of a leaky or exploding diaper, having corners sucked and chewed on, being dragged through the mud and the dust. They wash up pretty well. The whole idea behind quilting as a craft is to produce something that is not only beautiful, but useful. This idea of sewing two layers of fabric together with some stuffing between them arose out of the need for padding and warmth.

I'll leave you with an old quilting poem (why yes, we seem to have our own poetry, too)

It's Your Quilt

It's OK if you sit on your quilt. 
It's OK if your bottle gets spilt.
If you swallow some air
And you burp, don't despair,
It's OK if you spit on your quilt.

There are scraps old and new in your quilt,
Put together for you on your quilt.
If your gums feel numb
'Cause your teeth haven't come}
It's OK if you chew on your quilt.

We expect you to lie on your quilt,
If you hurt you may cry on your quilt.
On a cold rainy night,
Don't you fret, you're all right,
You'll be snug, warm and dry on your quilt.


author-- Nancy Riddell

Ok, not sure that is up with that background, and I'm too tired to retype the poem. Enjoy it anyway.