Baby, It's cold outside.

In my ever expanding endeavors, I have been inspired by some great artists on Craftster.org and have tried my hand at quilting. The beautiful BabyLock I won about 6 months ago has had a good number of features poorly neglected considering it's a Quilter's Dream machine and I do not quilt...until now!

I go this wonderful pattern (yes, I needed instructions) from Oh, Fransson for the Simple Modern Baby Quilt which she sent me super quick (I am a instant gratification kinda gal). I recommend buying it if you have little clue to quilting but want to try. She also has a new one called Mixed Tapes quilt which is again, lovely! The instructions were easy to follow as long as your toddler doesn't throw them in the air, you don't quilt the printed instructions onto the back of the quilt, or you use the stapler for it's intended purposes. You could always print them again if you have any problems.

Here is the first quilt I put together, it's for little Max.

Top of quilt, sans binding

Close up with meandering quilting.

The back is cream chenille. I added a little decorative applique to give it a lil' somethin'.

And Emmy, being a good big sister and stealing his blanket.

Which brings us to quilt #2, the Emmy quilt. I saw this great quilt on Craftster and though I didn't have instructions I managed to piece together this quilt using 6" wide strips of varying size, 2", 3" and a few 4". It was so great to make because I had everything on hand! I dug out my scraps and cut up more than enough for this quilt. I had the pink flannel on hand and the left overs of the chenille from Max's quilt.

Quilt front with binding.

Close up of top with meandering quilting. I got a lot better at it this time and it's fun!

And the back. I appliqued three seperate 6x6" squares to make more fun (or is it funner?).

I hand sewn the binding on the back of this one instead of machine stitching. Once I got down the rhythm it took me less than an hour to do this crib sized quilt. I won't go back to doing it on the machine but I will make sure I have a nice relaxed time doing it.

My girls really enjoyed this quilt because I used scraps that I had left over from making them clothes. So they were so excited to see fabrics they were familiar with and could point out what I made them with which fabrics. I'm working on a third quilt now and I'm really excited to add this new art form to my collection. It's a great way to use up scraps depending on the quilt you make and they're a nice cozy treat when it's a little chilly.