Dora

The finished top!

This baby quilt has been a while in the making as well, though not quite as long as my previous post.  I began it at quilt retreat in November, but was unable to finish it at the time as I needed to order backing, border, and binding fabric.  Have I mentioned that I really like to use white in baby quilts of late?  I do recognize that it is not necessarily the most practical color to use for babies, but at the same time, I do associate white with babies. Perhaps it is the idea of newness and a clean slate, etc.

This pattern, Dora (which I assume has nothing to do with the television show), is from the Leisure Arts book 3 Times the Charm! by Barbara Groves and Mary Jacobson of Me & My Sister Designs. This $10 book has a lot of great ideas and I have a feeling I will use it a fair amount for smallish baby quilts in the coming years.  I chose the Kate Spain line Terrain as I loved the bright colors and designs and hoped that they would be fun for both mom and baby, providing some visual interest to look at.

The pattern in the book used a setting of 5x5 blocks, but I chose to make the quilt a bit larger, with a 7x6 setting and a slightly wider border (6" versus 3 1/2") to show off the large-scale print. I hadn't realized how much of a line the border fabric had to it until I had cut the print and applied it!  My finished version of the quilt is approximately 42"x38" (book quilt finished at 30 1/2" square).

I quilted the center part of the quilt with white thread and chose a pink thread to meander with in the border.  This was the first time that I used two different threads and rolled the quilt through the frame more than once.  Needless to say, the pink thread required some tension adjustments and I had to rip out a good portion of a row of quilting after I discovered the tension issue. Note to self: check on the tension more frequently to avoid this in the future! Ripping quilting out while it is loaded on the frame is painful work (in more ways than one). In the end, I think I could have meandered the entire piece in white and it would have been fine, but I now have more confidence in my ability to do some thread changes on my frame.

This quilt is in the mail and I hope the recipients love it!  It sure feels good to be finishing up some of these projects that have been lingering on my sewing table.