darlaville: 2010 quilts

The year 2010 was a big year for making baby quilts.

First up was this crib sized quilt for Nick. I had a good time using up small bits and pieces of fabric on this little quilt. This photo was taken indoors and that always makes the colors look different ...it looked better in real life. It is a scrappy Irish Chain with Ohio Stars. I hand quilted it with diagonal lines.

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The next quilt was for baby Sebastian. The tilted blocks pattern was free online and I just made up the border design to use some small pieces that were left over.

The light blue background is actually a seersucker fabric. It was an experiment and I learned it's not the best for making quilts but it did add some nice texture and interest.

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Emily's parents didn't know if she was a boy or a girl until she arrived into the world. I was counting on them having a boy and I nearly had this quilt finished...so this is Emily's quilt.

See that blue sashing? It's that same seersucker. I must have gotten a really good deal on it!

Fortunately, I had a pretty, soft yellow butterfly fabric on the back. That added more of a feminine touch.

Hand quilted - that's all I knew how to do at the time.

If these last three quilts look a lot alike, it's because at the time I thought you had to use up all the fabric you had on hand before you could buy more. Now I have learned that's not necessary!

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Now here is a small quilt that's not a baby quilt. I made this one for my mother, for Mothers Day. I didn't exactly have it finished in time, but I brought it over and showed it to her that day, anyway.

My mother collects paper dolls, so when I came across these fabric panels of paper dolls and their outfits, I wanted to use it in a little quilt for her. I used fabrics from the same line to frame each section of the panel and for the borders, I hand quilted around each shape (plus more quilting overall).

There were only eight doll sections, so I added this block with a basket of yo yo flowers to make an even arrangement of blocks.

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This next quilt for Blake is one of my favorites. I had bought the dog fabric first, but I thought it was just too cute to cut in small pieces. So, I looked for a pattern that had some larger sections.

Look at these dogs - cute!

The color is more true in this next photo and you can see the quilting better. It's hand quilted with Baptist Fans. I like this soft puckered look after the quilt goes through the washer and dryer.

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When it was time to start working on this crib quilt for Faith, I was happy to pick out some girly fabrics.
But then I chose a light blue check for the sashing and borders to add some contrast.

The block pattern is one where you stack up your squares of fabric and cut through them all at once, then arrange and sew.

It is hand quilted.

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I finished up the year with this crib quilt for Allie. Again, the duck fabric was so cute I didn't want to cut it up small, so I alternated squares of duck fabrics with pieced blocks.

See how cute these ducks are? The color isn't quite right in this indoor photo, though..

Here's where I goofed up on fabric choices a bit. See how the yellow sections are made up of two different yellows? I should have had a sharper contrast between the two yellows. One should have been much much lighter than the other...and it would have made the block look more dimensional. That's how it was in the block pattern anyway. I will try this block again sometime.