simple baby quilt tutorial

A couple years ago when some good friends of ours had their first baby, I made them a simple patchwork quilt. The mama is a fabulous photographer, and she took beautiful photos of the babe on the quilt each month, to document her growth. Well, they just had a second daughter about a month ago, and I'm finally getting around to making a companion quilt for the new daughter.

I decided I wanted 6" squares, so I started out with 56 7x7" squares, enough to make a 42x48" quilt, or 8 strips of 7 6" squares, allowing for a 1/2" seam.

I haven't tried quilting since Anabelle's been able to crawl, and I learned it's now much harder! I eventually got the squares laid out in the pattern I wanted them, but between the cat and the baby, it took some doing.

 Once I had the arrangement figured out, I sewed the squares together one strip at a time, from left to right.

Then I sewed each strip together, taking care to match the squares up at the corner, until the whole top was pieced.

I used the pillowcase method to join the layers, which is the easiest and most forgiving way I know to do it. To do this, you lay the batting on your work surface, lay the quilt backing face-up on top of the batting, and then lay the quilt top face-down on top of the backing. I then secure all three layers with safety pins, and sew around the edge, leaving a 12-18" gap at the bottom for turning. Once the edges have been stitched, I trim off the excess down to 1/4", and clip the corners.

After turning the quilt through the gap, I iron all edges and hand-stitch the opening closed. Then, for this quilt, I used embroidery floss to tie knots at each corner, rather than quilting.

And finally, it's done! Now I just need to get it in the mail...