After completing several quilted tote bags, I set out to try my hand at another baby blanket. This time for my husband’s cousin, who was expecting her first child. I thought it would be a great way to finally quilt a larger project and give a one-of-a-kind gift to one of our dear family members. As you can see from the photo, it was a basic chevron pattern, made with half square triangles. For the piecing I primarily used fabric from my inherited stash and the colors came together really nicely.
In the background chevrons I quilted wavy lines. In the multicolored chevron I opted for semi-circles between the points with some echoing. And for the border I used the walking foot to quilt some straight lines. Over all, I was pleased with the final project, though I wished that I had made the wavy lines either straight or wavy-er – as it is I thought it looked a bit like someone wanted to quilt a straight line, but a small earthquake had occurred during the sewing. My takeaway is that sometimes nuance doesn’t really come through in quilting. Perhaps at times it’s better to be a bit bolder so it feels more intentional?
The good thing about the subtlety of quilting though, is that I finally started to see what my girl Angela Walters talks about all of the time, people really don’t notice your mistakes on the finished project. My semi-circle lines were far from perfect, but at the end, I realized you couldn’t really tell.
I did wash it before I sent it out, because, what can I say, I’m a sucker for the crunchy, heirloom quilt look and feel. Quilts with that look and feel just really remind me of Grandma’s house.
With that, I packaged it up and shipped it out. Perhaps the thing that I’m most proud of is that I made my self-imposed deadline and it arrived at their house the day after they got from the hospital with their new little boy!
Seams Right Quilting 