Simple Baby Tie Quilt

My cousin and his wife will soon become parents! I wanted to make them something, but I am really bad with deadlines when it comes to quilting. The projects always take longer than I expect they will. Babies are born without regard to whether the baby quilt is finished, so I needed a manageable project.

I selected fabrics mostly from Lotta Jansdotter’s Bella line…

…for a tie quilt comprised of simple squares. I used high-loft polyester batting to give a bigger impact to the tie quilting.

There is family history involved, too. My dad’s grandma made my parents a tie quilt for their wedding. It’s the only tie quilt we own, so to me, tie quilts symbolize beginnings.

Also, I thought tie quilting would be faster and easier than machine quilting. I still am not sure since I haven’t machine quilted a whole quilt yet, but I will say tie quilting gave me some blisters! I was surprised that a straight needle seemed to work better than the curved needles I tried. The curved metal was weak, so I broke at least three of them.

The mom-to-be is outgoing and isn’t afraid of color. I selected fabrics that I thought would reflect this. I also wanted gender-neutral colors since I didn’t know the gender of the baby when I started.

I used a sheet as backing (pink! – gender revealed a few months ago) and a light gray fabric with a fern print (from Joann’s) for the binding.

This was the first time in my life I didn’t mind hand-sewing something. I was cursing a little as I bound the first side of the quilt, but I found my zen as I rounded that first corner!

The pattern isn’t difficult, but I still like this quilt for its energetic colors. I hope the baby enjoys it, too. And as an added bonus, I even finished before the baby’s birth!

If I remember correctly, this quilt is twin size: 63″ x 87″. I started so long ago that I don’t know if I can trust my notes!

I blogged about this quilt before here. You can find a photo of the quilt that inspired me here.

Have you tried tie quilting? Do you like it? Do you think it’s easier or harder than machine quilting? I’d love to compare notes!

How I Started Sewing

When I found out a former roommate was going to have a baby, I was excited. I had known her since before she had met her husband, so I had the unique privilege of watching her family story unfold. I wanted to gift her with something special—something that would show I still considered her a good friend, even though we no longer live in the same city. Since she grew up overseas, I reasoned that people would be more likely to send cash or other items easily sent via mail. I thought it a tragedy that her baby wouldn’t have anything homemade. Having grown up on a farm with many homemaker moms as aunts and a seamstress grandmother, plus countless crafty distant relatives, I had crocheted AND knit baby blankets, lots of clothes, bibs, etc. So I made it my personal objective to make something for the baby.

Never mind that I hadn’t really sewn anything before. My grandma taught me how to use a sewing machine when I was little. She is probably also how I learned to knit and crochet, although I barely remember how and never learned to start the first row. The extent of my sewing skills was basically holding fabric scraps against Barbie dolls, hand stitching an outfit inside out, and learning through osmosis when my mom was going through one of her crafty phases. Still, how hard could it be?

I had a moment of brilliance when I started. I decided to make a “practice quilt” before starting on the baby’s project so I wouldn’t totally screw hers up. That practice quilt is now known affectionately as the Ugly Quilt and still isn’t finished. My first square—which I quickly learned from google is called a “block”—wouldn’t lay flat. I had to google a whole new set of block options that weren’t so involved. Only later did I find out that even professional quilters use tricks (like breaking parallelograms into triangles) to sew their blocks more easily. Tell me which version below looks easier:

 

(In case it’s not obvious, I tried version 2 with the Ugly Quilt.) This is the difference between the way version 2 bubbled versus the comparatively little bubbling after I adapted:

Once I settled on an easier pattern for the baby quilt, things went much more smoothly. I used simple squares:

Since my old roommate and her husband use nicknames for each other (in Gujarati) that are birds, I selected a variety of bird-related prints. One of the birds I incorporated was an owl because she remembered I wore owl socks to the bar exam the year we lived together; it was a way for me to be part of the baby’s life! Considering how little experience I had (AND HOW LITTLE MEASURING I DID!), I was excited by the result.

Here’s the back:

And finally, a progress shot:

I have been an avid Pinterest stalker and google searcher ever since, always looking for inspiration either to copy with my own fabrics or to incorporate into an otherwise original idea. I hope my skill improves with each project. I’m impatient, so improvement may prove a little slow!