Baby Quilts

First of all, a shout out to my dad on his birthday – Happy Birthday Jimmers!

And now on to my recent quilting epiphany.  It should have been obvious:  in terms of man hours, making a quilt for a baby is way less time and work than making a quilt for a full sized adult.  It’s amazing!  And fun!

It’s not that I had never started a baby quilt.  I recently found a quilt that I started making a few years ago for a baby who is now almost four.  That’s never getting finished.  But after making a quilt for my sister’s upcoming arrival, I’m hooked.

I did most of the piecing by hand, pretty soon after Tate was born.  It was right around the time when Tate was really little and not yet sleeping through the night and I was completely exhausted, but I was past the point of falling asleep immediately when I sat down on the couch.  I definitely didn’t have the energy to sit at a sewing machine and I wanted something to do with my hands for the hour I could stay awake watching tv.  So I just started sewing by hand.  At some point in the process, probably when I caught up on sleep, I realized that was taking forever and did the rest on my machine.  I also did machine quilting for the very first time.  I’m still hand quilting loyal for larger quilts and will probably hand quilt some baby quilts as well, but it was certainly speedy.

The other baby quilt I recently finished is titled “Fabric I Love.”  It was the first time I used the rotary cutter that Trent gave me for Christmas.  I really had a good time making it because it was completely in line with my creative process:  sewing and cutting and sewing and cutting with no particular plan, just watching everything come together.

I might fit in some additional smaller quilts, but my big project right now is finishing the two quilts for Rush and Tate, bunk bed size.  Because I split the quilt I was working on for Rush into two quilts, I had to add extra fabric and now I need a big chunk of time to lay everything out and reorganize.   My goal is to finish them by Christmas.  Well, Anglican Christmas, so I have through January 5, 2012.  That’s sounding overly ambitious, but hopefully a goal will add a little positive pressure.