Sunday, December 30, 2012

Sunshine & Shadows - Another Baby Quilt

My sister-in-law, Jan, has wanted to be a grandmother almost as long as I have known her. This past year, she finally got her wish, twice. Not only that, there is another one on the way. Both of her grandchildren are girls. I thought I'd throw together a quilt for her with some material that I had just laying around the house. So now when the granddaughters visit, she can throw this on the floor and put them on it. Yeah, right. My guess is that she is going to stick in on the wall and it will NEVER have a child on it!

Here's the plan that I drew out. I like to plan things out before I begin. I've often wanted to make a Sunshine & Shadows pattern. I imagined this as a rose, surrounded with leaves and rose buds in the corners. I must say that I'm pleased with the result.



With this pattern, there is a short-cut that is very handy. Cut the fabric into strips, sew them together, then you can cut strips of the repeating patterns.



Here's the green strips sewn together before being cut. I was very careful to iron the seams all open. This cuts down on the bulk.

Here you can see the seams easier, on the back of course.

Here I've laid out strips of the pink and green to see how they look.


Here's filling in more of the center.

I used the dark green as the binding. I think it framed everything quite nicely.

I actually quilted this quilt using my sewing machine at home. I just followed the gutters (seams).
Although I didn't take any pictures of the back of the quilt, it is a solid dark green. I told Jan to use this quilt with the granddaughters. If they look like they are going to behave, place them on the front, it they look like they're going to spit up (or worse), flip it over and put them on the back.