Baby Gifts

I love buying baby flannel at JoAnns on Black Friday to make baby gifts.  I had flannel on hand, but was behind on making and giving them as gifts.  I decided to try and make as many a possible to catch up.  In preparation for making lots of blankets, I cut up an older cutting mat and taped it to my new mat. (For more information about my cutting table check out this post.)

This made my cutting mat 48 inches by 72 inches instead of just 40 inches.  Now I can lay an entire width of fabric on the cutting table and cut all of the way around.  So much better.

This was so much easier and faster.  I can move my cutting table into the middle of the room and walk around all four sides.  I also decided to try my new corner ruler from Creative Grids.  I now love the look of rounded corners on the baby blankets.

After all three layers are cut and pinned around the edges I sew them together using the envelope method and top stitch around the edges.  I used to tie them like on this blanket.

However, I decided to try something new and machine quilt them instead.

My first try was a bit too puffy and made the edges ripple a little.  So I started quilting a larger stipple and that seemed to work better.

I used up the last of my comfort loft polyester batting on these blankets.

Then the I switched to my Hobbs 80/20 scraps which I zig-zagged together.

I love how they turned out with the Hobbs 80/20 batting.

I plan on using it for baby blankets in the future.  I think it will be so much better for snuggling a baby.  It will also take less room to store finished blankets before I give them away.

 I was very happy that even though the edges were finished before they were quilted, I had no tucks on the back of the quilt.  There was just ripples around the edges.  The 80/20 batting solved a lot of that issue and I will keep making baby gifts like this.

My new cutting method and quilting instead of tying saved me more than a half hour per blanket.  (Check out this post for a tutorial on how I used to make baby blankets.)  When I make so many gifts all at once that saved time really adds up!  Now I need to buy more baby flannel.  All but two of these blankets have been given away or are destined for a certain little baby.

What is your favorite go-to gift for new babies?

XX,
Jasmine

P.S.  I will be linking up with some of the parties on my sidebar.  Check them out for more quilty inspiration.

Double Batting Test

I want the quilting on my WISP to really show, so I have been contemplating using a double batting.  I decided to test it out.  This is made with a layer of Hobbs 80/20 batting and a layer of the Hobbs wool batting. This sample measures 8 inches by 14 inches.

I put it in the washer and dryer with a load of whites to see how it would look after laundering.

It now measures 7.5 by 13.5 inches, not bad shrinkage with the cotton/poly blend and the wool batting.

The back of the sample (80/20 side) looks good too.

I love how it turned out and think I will be using it in my quilt soon.

Have you ever done a double batting like this?

XX,
Jasmine

Feather Boot Camp Weeks 1-2

A little over a week ago Carole, at From My Carolina Home, mentioned a free online class for learning to FMQ feathers.  It is called Feather Boot Camp, and is taught by Suzanne Earley (who gladly accepts donations/tips for the class).  It sounded interesting, so I checked it out.

I watched the videos for the first week, practiced drawing for a couple days, then watched the videos for the second week.  I am so glad I did.  The first week Suzanne has you practice the motions of over the top feathers, and the second week she teaches what makes for pretty feather shapes.  I figure if you are going to practice, you might as well practice correctly.  So I combined the first two weeks into my practice.

In addition to working on my Modern Farmer's Wife, I have also spent a lot of time doing this (not my best drawing, because Monkey kept trying to take over)...

This is an app on my iPad called Doodle Buddy, and I have been practicing drawing feathers with the special end on this pen.  It is nice, because you can draw on pictures (which my sons use to give each others beards and mustaches).  I was able to easily trace the feathers in her handouts.  She recommends drawing feathers for fifteen minutes a day, but I probably did a lot more than that.  I took my iPad with me a lot of places and drew whenever I had free time (like in the parking lot when waiting for my boys to finish school).

Then at the end of the week, Suzanne has you practice stitching feathers on the machine.  I normally make whole cloth quilts to practice free motion quilting (nice to make something useful) but I thought it would be nice to use muslin so I could see what I was doing better.  I decided to try something new and use up my batting scraps.  The kind that were 3-5 inch strips.  The kind that I didn't want to take the time to zig zag together and almost put in the trash.

It may be a little hard to see, but I put the muslin down on the back of an old cutting mat.  I used basting spray on the wrong side of half of the width of fabric.  Then I laid the batting strips on the top.  It was like a puzzle and kind of fun. I didn't even trim down or square up the batting before using it.  You can see that there were some little gaps in the batting, but it wasn't a problem at all.

After the muslin was covered, I used the basting spray again on the batting.  Then I smoothed out the muslin over the top.  I used more than 4.5 yards of muslin and emptied my small scrap batting bag.  I used some of the quilt sandwiches that night, and have more for other weeks.  :)

As a side note, if the batting is more than 12 inches wide I will zig zag it together to make frankensteined batting for quilts.

Here is my first practice piece.  I used my Frixon pen to draw lines two inches apart and kept the vines straight.  I tried quilting in all directions, but kept wanting to turn the fabric to quilt the feathers in the same direction.  I quilted the center feather twice to see if I could improve the shape a little.

To shake my practice up, I drew a boxy spiral and quilted it without turning the fabric.  I basically forced myself to quilt feathers in all directions.

I was having so much fun that I didn't want to stop.  I drew more lines on another sandwich with a curved vine.  Then quilted it in different directions.

I can already see a big difference in my feathers using this over the top method instead of what Suzanne calls long arm feathers.

I quilted all three of these samples with my Baby Lock Tiara.  The batting which was just spray basted worked great! And another nice thing is that I was able to empty seven partial bobbins.  I usually like to start with full bobbins when working on a project, so this was perfect for finishing up the left overs of different colors.  :)

I highly recommend Suzanne Earley's class.  Her videos are helpful and the handouts are fantastic.  This link, Feather Boot Camp, will take you to the table of contents for her class.

XX,
Jasmine

P.S.  I am linking up with Cynthia at Quilting is More Fun than Housework for Oh Scrap.  She said that using batting scraps would count for the linky.  :)