Baby Quilts #3, 4 and 5

"Princess" As You Like It quilt

Pink "Flying geese" quilt

My own design-

Animal ark blocks and rail fence blocks

As I mentioned previously, I liked making the "As You Like It" baby quilt pattern and it was easy to make. I had now ironed the bugs out, so I decided to use the same pattern, but completely different fabric for baby quilt #3.

This quilt was for a little princess to be and so I went with princess fabric, a turquoise print with princess crowns pearls and heels along with purple butterfly and pale blue heart fabric as accents. The back was a fabric of purple and pink bunnies. I made this quilt the same size as the other two, 35 inches square. The binding was made from a combination of strips of the fabrics in the blocks. (It was actually the second baby quilt that I completely finished, and my first photo of it was taken back on January 30/ 09.)

When I'm out shopping I enjoy browsing through the fabric department to see if there's anything there that tickles my fancy which I might want to get to add to my 'stash'. (Your 'stash' is a fabric or pile of fabrics that caught your eye at some point in your shopping travels and which you bought even though you didn't have any immediate plans for it. It marks a true addiction to quilting I might add! Lol!) If you do run across such a fabric or a really good deal at any time on a fabric that you like, it's a good idea to buy at least 2 meters ( or 2 yards) and preferably 3m or yd. or more if you really like it a lot. It's also good to have a few solid colored or neutral colored fabrics, too, that could work in conjunction with a lot of other fabrics as accents, backing, edging and so on.

I'm the type of person who doesn't like to be wasteful, so I try and use everything including left over fabric or quilt blocks. I had a number of animal ark quilt blocks left from the first quilt and some red and pink striped fabric from quilt #2 . I had recently bought some "Bazoople animal" fabric at a local store just because I really liked it, ( see above paragraph) and so I decided to use all of that and create a new baby quilt out of it.

The result of that is the red, white and yellow rectangular baby quilt above. It's 38 1/2" by 30 1/2" inches in size. (My first non-square baby quilt...) This one was finished in early March (yes, March was a very busy quilting month that year, LOL!) and it was sent to friends back in Manitoba who were adding a new baby boy to their already handsome family.

I love to brows through quilting magazines at the store to see if there's anything that jumps out at me. If not, I don't buy the magazine even if it is the latest edition. If I do like at least 1 quilt pattern, I'll often buy it and put a place marker in that page before I add it to my shelf or better still, I'll write the name of the quilt and the page number on the front cover of the magazine for easier reference later. I saw such a quilt in a magazine that I thought I'd like to try. I had been intrigued by a block design called "Flying Geese" which is a traditional quilt block, but which I had no idea how to make. And as you may have noticed, if you have been reading any of my blogs, I do like a challenge and love to learn something new.

(Keeps Alzheimer's at bay, or so they say! Hey, I'm a poet and don't even know it... LOL! That's the thing about blogs, you can say silly things and likely no one ever reads them anyway! )

So long story short, I decided to try my hand at creating some flying geese blocks.

First I looked on the internet and printed up a few different directions for flying geese blocks and tried to figure them out. Was a little unsure, but I figured, what the heck! I have lots of fabric, so what if I screw up. I'll just keep trying till I get the hang of it.

(I forgot to mention that my sister-in-law had given me a big stack of fabric with baby / child type of prints which she had had kicking around her storage area collecting dust. Of course I washed it all and ironed it first.)

(Did I mention that you have to like or at least not mind ironing to succeed at quilting?)

So I read over the pattern, which as it turns out was very straight forward and I followed the directions, cutting the fabric stripes out, then cutting those strips into rectangles and squares, then sewing them together into individual little flying geese blocks. Put simply, they end up looking like a row of triangles, all pointing in the same direction, like a flock of geese flying in formation. It was so easy, too and I can't figure out why it seemed so hard when I read the directions on line.... I guess sometimes new things take time to get used to, till you catch on, then they seem simple.

In between the rows of flying geese blocks, I put the left over little triangles (which get cut off the flying geese blocks) sewed sideways in rows with pink fabric strips in between each row. That's not what the pattern asked for, but I liked the effect. (I have yet to follow a pattern exactly to the letter. I often change it to suit my needs as I go along. I hope the designers of the patterns aren't offended by that because I certainly don't mean it to be disrespectful!)

This quilt is still in my closet along with it's matching diaper bag ( did I mention I make bags, too?) and it hasn't found a home yet.