'Quilting For babes' - Flying Geese Quilt

Well, the 'Quilting for Babes' little quilt top is finished now! This is the preemie quilt project ( as my daughter calls it) which is the brainstorm of Kathy Murray, a very busy and caring young mother from Winnipeg.

If you want to know more about that altruistic project you can go to Kathy's blog and read all about it :

http://magnoliadesigns.blogspot.com/

Or see:

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/columnists/shes-caring-for-babies-like-others-did-for-hers-91892684.html


This little quilt top is 24' by 36' in size as requested and the blocks are all little flying Geese blocks, 4"by 2"rectangles, sewn in 6 rows of 10 blocks with yellow fabric strips in between and around the outer border. The in between yellow strips are 1 1/2 inches wide ( cut 2 inches wide to begin with for seam allowances). The top and bottom yellow borders are 2 inches wide to get it to exactly 24 inches in width, and the side borders are 2 1/4 inches in width so it is exactly 36 inches long! Ta da!


I have also sandwiched it together, in other words, pinned the back fabric, the batting and the top together. It is now ready to be machine quilted!

(For directions on how to make this block, see my "Flying Geese" post (May 5)  and for directions on how to machine quilt, go to my other post by the same name... "Learning to Machine Quilt'" (March 26) You might also want to check out " Quilt Roll Photos - March 26 which has handy information about rolling a larger quilt as you prepare to machine quilt it.)

I spent last weekend quilting up a storm for 3 straight days with my wonderful daughter R2! She drove here to spend a few days with us,  just her and the dog, and to quilt! R2 is just learning to quilt, but has caught on really quickly to the techniques and I think she has caught the quilting fever!

A number of weeks ago she and I had our very first mother/ daughter quilt session. We went shopping in town for fabric and she chose some very vibrant colors and prints to make blocks for her first top. She decided to make a baby quilt, something relatively small to start out.

We looked at patterns in some of my magazines, but none of them jumped out at her.  R2 decided to make a variety of her own  blocks and she drew the arrangement out on a piece of paper.  I showed her how to cut the fabric using a ruler, cutting wheel and a cutting mat.  She cut all the pieces, but didn't have time to assemble them here. After she drove home R2 spent the next few days sewing the pieces together into blocks and then sewing the blocks together. She had quite a bit of fabric left over so she made herself another whole set of blocks. Then she phoned me and asked what to do next. That led to the  3 day quilting session that we had last weekend!

I showed R2 how to put on mitered outer borders to finish off the quilt tops.Then we measured it, added 6 inches to the length and the width measurements to figure out how big to cut the back fabric and the batting to those dimensions.
We taped the back fabric upside down to the kitchen floor with strips of masking tape, laid the batting on top of that and then last laid the little quilt top on top of the layers. (What I call "sandwiching") Then we proceeded to pin all three layers together.

After that R2 quilted both of her little quilts on her machine. Last of all, I showed her how to make the mock border using the extra back fabric, which is sewn over to the front as the quilt edge. They both turned out well and she is quite proud of them! 

While she was here, she saw the little 'Flying Geese' blocks that I had made and was curious how to make them. I had some extra squares and rectangles cut out so I showed her and she made several of her own. At one point we went shopping for more fabric and it was quite evident that R2 HAS caught the quilting bug by the amount of new fabric she bought!  We had a thoroughly enjoyable weekend together and we hope to do another quilting session soon!

Now I'm running some ideas through my head about how to machine quilt my little 'Flying Geese baby quilt.....  It promises to be a cool and rainy long weekend so instead of planting the trays of bedding plants I have stashed on our deck, there will be some humming of the sewing machine going on!

Will keep you posted!

...As you may have noticed, I have been neglecting this quilting blog somewhat. I guess that's because I have been devoting so much time to my other passion, gardening! Not only that, I have started a gardening blog on my gardening adventures in rural central Alberta!

http://carolasgarden.blogspot.com/