Baby B's Baby Blanket

I am so excited to finally share this blanket with you.

A while back, I made a baby blanket for our good friends. It was finally unveiled at the baby shower yesterday. Everyone was so incredibly impressed and grateful for such a thoughtful present. This quilt was more difficult for me than others I've done. Halfway through this quilt, I realized I was working with faulty supplies. My cutting mat had warped, meaning a square wasn't square anymore, and the quarter inch seam allowance I thought I was using wasn't actually a quarter inch. I was able to finish this quilt using a new Olaf cutting mat, and a Pfaff Quilt Expression 2046 (best purchase EVER my friends).

Face of the Quilt.

This quilt, believe it or  not, is a disappearing Nine Patch quilt. Here is how you do it:

Please Note- Everything I do uses 1/4 inch seam allowances!

For this quilt, I used 2 Moda Noteworthy Charm Packs and 2 Moda Bella Solids Natural Charm Packs. A charm pack is a package of 42 pre-cut 5 inch squares in various different fabric that all coordinate. The boarder was made from 1 fat quarter, and the binding was made from another fat quarter.

Start with your simple Nine Patch. For this quilt, I put the same colors in the corners, with a contrasting color in the middle, but be creative! There are no real rules to this (well, except for your 1/4 inch seam allowances).

Nine Patch after sewing the pieces together

Now, you will take your rotary cutter and cut this finished piece into quarters:

Cut the Nine Patch along these lines

Now, you should have something that looks like this:

Please don't judge my poor computer art skills

Now for the magic. Take the upper left hand corner, and the bottom right hand corner, and flip them so the green square is now on the outside corner.

See what we did there?

Now, resew this bad boy together. You now have 1 finished block. For this blanket, I did 9 blocks (3 x 3) to make it square. And I had fabric left over.

For the backing, I always like to use something that is fuzzy and feels nice to your skin. I chose a light green for this quilt.

Close up of quilt with backing and binding.

The next part I can take no claim to. A wonderful woman named Terry Burris in Merrimack, NH does all my quilting for me. I just don't have the equipment. She and I worked together to choose this fun butterfly detail. I really think it brings the quilt to life, and offsets the blocky-ness of the quilt well.

I also machine bind my quilts. Some people may consider this cheating, but I consider it working smarter, not harder. I can provide a tutorial on how I do this, but I do exactly what the book "Still Crazy for Baby" by Barbara Groves and Mary Jacobson taught me.

I always reinforce my edges with extra stitches

In the end, I'm incredibly proud of how this quilt came out. This quilt taught me a lot about the quilting world and the importance of the right tools. I hope Baby B enjoys this quilt for years to come.