♥ Baby Quilt ♥

Well hooray, I finished the quilt for Baby R! I never thought I would as I purchased the fabric ages ago but was so occupied with my lovely R that I couldn't seem to find the time to get started. Plus I am a total scaredy cat when it comes to cutting fabric, I put it off as long as I can because I hate the cutting stage as you can never go back but I've since learned a helpful phrase "check twice, cut once" so this is my new mantra with fabric. No longer will I be so afraid of fabric, no longer will it look at me, sticking out it's tongue out at me and goading me. I am not afraid of cutting you anymore, fabric beware, I've got a rotary cutter and I'm not afraid to use it!  Ok sorry about that.. 

As I said I purchased the fabric what feels like a longtime ago from the lovely people at Seamstar (who were soooo kind and helpful, they even helped me pick my binding fabric). 

This is how the fabric arrives from Seamstar. Attention to detail. Scrummy!

My lovely fabric bundle arrived and I oooohed and aaaahed over it for a while and then I put it away in my craft cupboard in the hope that someday I might get the time to start (and I still had issues about cutting fabric then!). So the quilt began life as this lovely fabric bundle by Monaluna, called Anika. It's really fun and super soft, 100% organic cotton.

All wrapped up in a neat little bow

Mmm fabric goodness

The planning stage of the quilt I did in the evenings when Baby R was sleeping, dreaming of dachshunds with long tails licking his toes and tickling his nose. The planning of a quilt is very important and I drew lots of sketches and deliberated and cogitated long and hard about the size and layout of the quilt, size of the squares etc, until finally I was ready to begin. Then a few weekends ago my husband (who is very supportive of my crafty endeavours) took Baby R to visit his Granny which gave me the chance to get started. I must add though that I am not a quilter, I really don't have much experience but I am of the opinion that you can learn as you go and this is what I did with help from tutorials on YouTube along the way. 

I must add that the internet is really a lovely place. I am so grateful to the very talented and clever people who give up their free time to make tutorials to teach people like me the art of quilting, crocheting, hand-stitching and whatever you fancy. You name it, some kind soul has made a tutorial on it. ♥♥ Thank you all ♥♥

So eventually, after a few weekends of baby R and his dada doing the rounds of relatives and friends, I finished the quilt. Yay, Yay and double Yay. 

Would you like to have a look? (Teehee as if you have a choice!)

The front of the quilt

 So I chose to make the quilt using 4" squares with 6 squares across and 7 down, I added a plain white border and as mentioned the lovely Courtney at Seamstar helped me match the fabric for the binding (in addition to cutting fabric stressing me out, all things binding also stress me out, but not anymore I have also overcome my fear of binding! Hip hip hooray).  

The back of the quilt with the super cute swedish forest fabric 

 I had originally thought to use a plain fabric on the back of the quilt but then I decided to go the whole hog and make the quilt reversible so I picked one of the main fabrics from the bundle. The one called Swedish Forest just looked so cute and I thought that Baby R would have fun with the animal characters on it as he grows up. It might have been a bit more cost effective to use a plain fabric on the back but this is something that will stay in our family forever and I really hope Baby R loves it as much as I loved making it for him (oh dear writing that just brought a tear to my eye!).

Now for a few close ups of the fabric as it is just so lovely you really have to see it

Is it bedtime yet? I think I'd like to climb under the covers  

The clever fox

Check out that naughty fox slinking it's way around the hen houses!

Can you see the hens? I tried to protect them from the crafty foxes by placing some dots in between!

All is well in the Swedish Forest

Now this brings me to the small matter of the binding. Well I have never done the binding of a quilt before and I was very nervous about doing it as it has always looked super difficult. So I did extensive research on the subject and watched many YouTube videos and thought about it and dreamt about it. But I did it! I made my own binding and joined it together with mitred seams and joined it to the quilt without the aid of a binding tool (the lovely American woman on one of the youtube videos I watched said "if you can finish your binding without a binding tool more power to ya" so that made me even more chuffed as that's exactly what I did). And the other thing about binding is that I am petrified of hand sewing, I just don't have much experience and I really never thought that I would be able to hand sew the binding to the quilt. I thought long and hard (yes lots of thinking and burning of grey cells has gone into this quilt!) about machine sewing the binding to the quilt and in the end I just couldn't because I wanted to do the job right and I don't think the finish of the machine stitching would have been very good. Also I wanted a part of me to be in the quilt for Baby R so slightly reluctantly I decided to hand sew the binding to the quilt. And I am so pleased with the result, this is my proudest moment of the whole quilt.

NB: When the EXPERTS in the YouTube videos tell you that it is vital to match the colour of the thread to the colour binding fabric you must not say "pfft" and ignore this because it turns out that the ladies (and sometimes gents) in the YouTube videos really do know what they are talking about with their countless years of experience. So after starting with white thread which looked absolutely horrendous with a capital H, as the ladies in the YouTube videos said it would, I went out and purchased lovely green thread to match the binding! 

Binding done

Now you may not think it is up to much but to me it is my finest hour!

Folded and ready to be presented to Baby R

So now that I have finished the quilt I must hand it over to it's rightful owner. And do you know what, I think he likes it. He had a play with it this afternoon and tussled with it and played peeka underneath and it truly made my heart swell with joy and happiness. 

♥♥ Thank you Mama ♥♥