Ella's quilt

Brian's colleagues are having babies right and left! Having made a minkee blanket for one, I am in a position to have to make them for everyone. I really don't mind (I like the people), but I am making very easy blankets. This quilt is from a cheater panel, Baby Genius by Benartex. Babies love these figures, and I didn't have to piece them! I just put on borders, backing, and quilted along the squares, then bound it.

Here's the backing -- it's the same fabric that you see in the bottom middle square of the quilt top. Wild!

Animal panel

Here's a Linus quilt made from a simple panel (the squares and the yellow dotted border surrounding them). Someone added the blue/green/yellow striped border and turned it in for a Linus top. I thought it was still too small, so added some green dotted fabric of my own as an outer border before quilting and binding it. You may recognize the fabric from Cool Brian (California Dreamin' s first incarnation).


I tried quilting this a new way, and it was wonderful. Whenever I have stitched a long, anchoring seam down the middle (as I was taught to do), I inevitably pull the fabric on the back and it gets puckered. I have tried several ways around this problem but have been unsuccessful. This time the quilting worked out great. I quilted the edge of each square, making it look pieced. This also kept me from having to start off with a long anchoring line of stitching. When I stitched in the ditch in the borders (and I must say I do a mean stitch in the ditch!), it still looked great. It's a baby quilt, so was easy to work with on the machine and I felt really good about how it came out. Nothing fancy at all, but it worked. Yay!