Umbrella Quilt

I get a lot of visitors looking for a baby quilt.  I make simple quilts with squares the size of sticky notes.  There is a quarter inch seam margin, so a half inch smaller than a sticky note is the size of the squares.  I usually make 12 to 14 squares in a row.

I roughly plan what I am doing when I buy the fabric (or dig it out of my piles).  I find that I have to lay it out to really decide what I want the quilt to look like.  No two quilts are exactly the same even if I use the same fabric.

 

 

After I get the pattern laid out, I pick it up a row at a time and pin it together with safety pins.  I number each row so that when I put it all back together, it will be in the right order. I always take a photo of the plan for reference in case I get something mixed up.

 

 

Then I baste the fabric into rows and sew those with the machine.  I am making quilts that need to be washed in a machine, so I think it is important to use the machine to make the stitching tougher.

 

Then I pin, baste and sew those rows together and the quilt top is made.  For me the next part is the fun part.

This is a different quilt, Blogger won't load any more new pictures.  I put the top on the back with batting in the middle and use a hoop and quilt.  I start the thread in the  middle by the batting and quilt from the center of the quilt outwards. 

 

When I have finished quilting, I trim the extra batting, fold some of the fabric from the back over and baste it and machine sew it down.  My quilts are machine sewn and hand quilted.  Some people just put yarn through the layers and tie the quilt together, but then it isn't really a quilt.  Quilting means sewing through the layers of fabric either by hand or by machine.

 

It takes me a while to make one of these quilts.  It is my relaxation.  I make the quilts to welcome the babies whoever they turn out to be.