Blue Moo Baby Quilt

I'm no scientist, but I've read and heard that babies enjoy the high contrast of black against white.  So I've made quite a few quilts that are black and white with a selected color, for this reason and the following...

I truely hate picking out fabrics for quilting... I spend hours wandering around the fabric store, picking things up, carrying them around, finding something else I like better, then trying to figure out where I got the original item from so that I can put it back.  I'm sure the people working there hate this, but also I've been assured that it is relatively common.  Also, having worked in a fabric store I feel like I've done my time doing the clean-up :)

Using B/W fabrics generally solves this issue for me... B/W fabrics nearly always match, and it's easy to incorporate just a bit of color, rather than worrying about color schemes, shades, etc.  

The following baby quilt was relatively easy to lay out, and I'm posting it to celebrate the 3rd birthday of the little one for whom it was quilted.  I cut 5" squares out of each of the selected fabrics, put one in the middle of the floor, and then built out from there making a symetrical yet not too obvious pattern.

The back was a cow print, and the stitching was done in blue.

Babies, Babies, Everywhere!

I know way too many people that are pregnant right now!  When I started this blog I was worried that I wouldn't be able to sew fast enough to keep up regular postings, but what I have found is that I'm too busy sewing to sit down and post!

So this is a baby quilt for my friend Lena, who is expecting a little girl in June.  Her theme is ladybugs (who knew there was SO MUCH ladybug stuff out there?) but I tried to be more subtle and just use the colors of her decor.  I think her husband appreciated this because his home has been overtaken by red and pink insect cartoons. Here's the originally selected fabrics, although I added a touch of green later just to add visual interest.

I tried* to use a pattern on this, it was free online at this link: http://www.camelotcottons.com/files/file/free_projects/27.pdf

*By tried I mean I loosely followed the instructions... I'm not good at patterns.

I've also heard of this pattern as "spiderwebs" which smart people do as paper piecing.  If I were to do it again I would certainly consider the paper piecing approach because, as the image below illustrates, it's REALLY difficult to match 8 triangles into a single point!

The primary deviations from the pattern were the following:

-I resized the pattern to about 60% of the original since this is a smaller quilt (approx 45"x45")

-I didn't want the "flowers" to be cut in half along the borders, so I made additional templates as needed to have only complete flowers.

Here's the finished product!