Joe's Baby Quilt

I finished the quilt top for my cousin's not-so-new baby.

I am quite pleased with the result given I was making up the design as I went for some of it.  It is the first quilt I've done where the design relied heavily on patchwork.  All my previous quilts have been lots of applique, or some applique and then just squares joined together.

Some of the blocks are a bit crooked, but I'm putting that down to the poor quality of the fabric.  It was one of the 'Bebe Fabric Rolls' from Spotlight.  I had lowered my expectations of the fabric based on what Margaret had said, but that didn't prepare me for the horror of trying to work with these strips.  They were cut off the grain and my strips were 1/8" shorter at the selvedge edge than the folded edge, which, when you are quilting with 1/4" seams, makes a big difference.  I had to cut my squares for the blocks from the middle of the strips, not the ends (to get the right size), which meant when I came to do the first border, I didn't have long enough pieces and I had to put the check squares in the corners.  Even then I think I had to skimp on a seam allowance here and there.  Actually I think the end result from that looks good anyway, bit it's annoying when you can't do what you want because of the fabric.

I really got into using my machine properly on this one!  I used the 1/4" quilting foot (as per earlier post) and did the embroidery on the bird and flower 'properly' using a backing and different stitches from the machine.  The eye is actually an eyelet stitch, which I hadn't done successfully before so am rather pleased.  The beak took a little time to get right (on practice fabric) as it is actually half of a diamond stitch.  In the end I started sewing the diamond stitch on scrap fabric and counted how many stitches it did, then when it was at the widest point, I stopped, put the quilt top in the machine and finished the pattern, to make a triangle.  I forgot to take a close up shot but I will try to remember to do that when the quilt is finished.

I think I've decided what quilting pattern I want to do in the main part, just have to work out something for the borders.  Am going to back it in the plain green of the border, it's easy and I already have enough on hand.

Oh, and it was supposed to be a cot sized quilt but I messed up the measurements along the way.  It's actually come out a really nice pram size!  Think I will make some more this size.

Whilst it was hard working with the poor quality jelly roll, it has given me a bit of fun working out what I can and can't do with a jelly roll, on fabric which I'm not so attached to, before I start cutting into the nice Moda jelly rolls I've bought.

Edit: just realised the previous post about this quilt didn't publish properly :(  So here it is if you want the beginning of the story!