I mentioned in my last post that Saturday was very productive. Not only did I get my charms cut and ready to ship out for the charm swap, I found inspiration in the form of a Hello Betty jelly roll for Ruthie's baby quilt. AND I finally decided on what to make for her! After much deliberation, the latest quilt-a-long quilt featured over at Crazy Mom Quilts just kept calling and calling. So I finally answered! The simple squares in conjunction with the soft pastel palate of the 30's inspired Hello Betty line just seemed to say "Hello Baby!" to me.
Since I'm making this quilt baby sized I didn't follow her tutorial by the book, but I just used it as inspiration for the quilt. I knew that if I followed her cutting directions I would end up with way too much so I decided to implement my own "cut as I go" method... sort of...
I started out by "eyeballing" approximately 40" inches of the Moda Bella White fabric and cutting my 2.5" strips. After the first two cuts I realized that I was cutting the wrong way so my strips ended up shorter than they should have, but this ended up not mattering much because, thankfully, I ended up using up all my white strips before they got too short!
Ruthie doesn't know what she's having so I decided to stick with "gender neutral" yellows and greens. I pulled out all of the fabric strips in the jelly roll in yellow and green that had corresponding patterns and married them to the white strips, just like in the tutorial then cut those down to 2.5" each and ended up with eight beautiful little piles of half squares. I know that I am going to end up with leftovers, but I can use them in another project. I am loving this quilt so much I am sure I will end up making it again, quite possibly very soon!
I am all for chaos, but if I'm really honest about it I have to admit that I like organized chaos. So as I piece this quilt top together I lay out my half squares in each row before I sew together my next strip. I know I want to alternate yellow and green and up until this point in the quilt top I have been avoiding placing coordinating fabrics next to each other. Although, I am toying with the idea of putting coordinates directly next to each other for the final layer but I'm not sure yet. What do you think?
Piecing the quilt top together went much faster than I thought it would and in the matter of a few hours I had most of the quilt top together. After my wonderful and amazing fiance came home from work I decided to take a break for the day. But I think just one, or maybe two, more rows and the quilt top will be finished. I can probably finish it up with another hour or two of work.
My only concern is the accent colors present in a couple of the fabrics. I know that I can get away with the blue if the baby ends up being a girl, but do you think the pink automatically prevents it from being a boy's quilt? I thought having both the pink and the blue would help make it gender neutral and balance each other out but maybe it's too pastel-y overall for a boy? Hmmm... What do you think?
I am sure no matter what that it will be appreciated and loved!
ReplyDeleteyou can have pink in the boy's quilt. i started one for my nephew before we knew he was a "he." i had made sure there were only little bits of pink so it wouldn't be labeled as girl and the quilt is well loved by baby and parents.
ReplyDeleteplus, if you think about it, pink used to be the color for boys since it meant they were healthy and robust while blue meant they were sickly. it was only after victorian times that changed.
I love your fabric choices and I think they are certainly gender neutral enough. Any baby(and it's parents) will love this quilt. Can't wait to see it done. This pattern was one on my short list to do, but never got around to getting fabric. Maybe I'll do a Halloween one.
ReplyDeleteI made a baby sleeping sack for my sister's baby with some pink in it even though I don't know is it a boy or a girl:)
ReplyDeleteI'm looking forward to seeing your progress!
ReplyDelete