baby quilts

It seems that babies sneak up on me! Not on their mothers, that's for sure. I try to keep ahead by always having a completed baby quilt on hand--but now it seems that cousing "R" is expecting twins! So that baby quilt pictured on my blog is for her. Then yesterday, I was speaking on the phone to a cousin on my husband's side and she told me that her daughter-in-law "Y" is "Any day now!" So I was cutting strips yesterday for another baby quilt. It keeps me out of mischief, I guess. I just love making baby quilts. I'm so obsessed about it that my daughter once told me, "Mom can you just make 4 baby quilts, sew them together, and make me one regular-sized quilt!"

Those quilt puffs are like peanuts

Puff quilts are so much fun to make, it just takes about a minute or two to do one puff. It's like the old saying about eating peanuts--you can't eat just one. I cut out some more scrap fabric today to make the blocks. I'm making a twin-bed sized quilt, so I have figured out that I need to make 23 rows of 18 blocks each. Since I'm just making mixed scraps with no particular pattern in mind, I decided that the easiest way to control all those puffs is to make rows as I go along, instead of having a daunting pile of 414 puffs at the end.

More about puff quilts

It's not necessary to add any additional batting to the back of this quilt. My directions are for a machine-sewn quilt. The old-fashioned way to make a puff or biscuit quilt was by whip stitching the blocks together by hand. And I have made them using old stockings and panty hose for the filling. One puff quilt I made, I used only two colors and alternated the patches. It was pink and blue, and quite pretty. Right now I have 2 laundry baskets full of scraps, so I'm just making the quilt using them. And the quilt already has a "home." A lady once asked me what I do with all my quilts. My answer was, "There's a line." People in my family are anxious to give my quilts a good home.

To make the baby quilt. I make the crazy-quilt blocks by sewing scraps together, I don't use a foundation. I cut the backgrounds for the applique generously, to be trimmed later. For the appliques, I made stars, but if you would like to make the quilt yourself, you might want to make hearts or another applique pattern. Each applique square could be a different picture, too. And the backgrounds could be all the same solid color.
I made these stars by lining them with interfacing. I first made a plastic template of the star. Then I traced the design 6 times unto the interfacing. Place interfacing and fabrics for applique right sides together. Sew the interfacing on the lines. Trim edges, clip the corners. Cut a little hole in the interfacing and turn the applique right sides out. Press the edges. Hand or machine sew in the center of your plain squares. After all the crazy-quilt and applique blocks are finished, press again, and then cut them all into 10 1/2 inch blocks and join together with 1/4 inch seams. Add a border. Quilt. I meander quilt by machine. Add binding. I embroider my name and date on the back.

This is a baby quilt that I made recently. It's alternating applique and crazy squares. I plan to publish directions for making it.

I'm making a puff quilt using left over fabrics, and bits of left over batting. I cut flannel or muslin 4 1/2 inches square. Then I cut fabrics 5 1/2 inches square. Pin the corners together. Pin the sides, making a tuck to make it fit. Machine sew on three sides. Stuff with some batting, and sew the last side together. These puffs can be joined into any size. Colors can be matched, if you want. I line the whole thing and tie in the centers of the squares, to finish.

puff quilt

May 21, 2007

I've been making quilts since 1961. I also do knitting, crochet and hand embroidery.
Roz