Baby Blanket

Wine of the Day: Vendage - Sauvignon Blanc

I have finished piecing the baby blanket! 

This quilt is for my friends Kristy and Wes who are about to have their first baby.  They don't know I am making it so I am really excited to get it finished and give it to them before their little girl comes.  The nursery is two tone orange and Kristy wants to incorporate some teal accents.  Wes also informed me that they have a jungle theme, Kristy doesn't care for pink but does like purple.  All of this was taken into account when selecting fabrics.

I had the orange on the far left and the purple at home already.  The rest are fat quarters I found at  Joann's.  I was thrilled to find the jungle theme fabric and the colors are perfect.  

The original idea was a simple horizontal stripe quilt.  I did some research on sizing though and found that my fat quarters weren't quite wide enough for that.  The ideal baby quilt size is apparently 32" x 52".  This will allow for the sides and the bottom to be tucked under a crib mattress without covering the baby's face.   So, the new idea was a vertical striped quilt that was more pieced than just my original simple idea.  For this I decided I could just make up the pattern.  I went with 1.5", 3" or 4.5" wide by 6" or 9" tall.  There was a lot of math involved, probably more than necessary but I finally figured out how many pieces to use.  I laid it out on the floor and played with the location of the colors until I finally settled on this:

The right side is actually going to be the top.  This was decided so that all of the animals were facing up.  Then I sewed each strip.  This went very quickly and I actually finished it up Thursday night before Brian came home.  Lucy helped...

With all of my strips sewed and laid out in order, Saturday morning I set out to finish it.  The whole thing went smoothly and quickly and before I knew it I was sewing my final piece.  I hadn't decided yet if there would be a border or not so I pulled out the white on white zebra print I had left over from my first quilt.  No competition, this NEEDED to be added.  Not only did it brighten up all the colors but the zebra pattern was a perfect fit for the theme.  I went with a 3" border to keep the portions the same as the other strips.  It is just about the right size at about 32" x 56" And here it is:

All pieced together and ready for the next step.  With Hurricane Sandy pounding down on us, I will not get to the store for a while but I have already decided that I want the back to be the large orange and white pattern.  I am thinking that the edge might be white too, or purple.  That hasn't been decided yet.  For now, I will be inside riding out the storm...

kara