Making a Crazy Quilt

            My best friend since the 4^th grade is having her first baby. I just knew after she took that positive pregnancy test in my bathroom that I was going to make her baby something cute and meaningful.

            Two of the nurses I work with are big quilters and make the cutest baby quilts. I asked them if they’d help me make a baby quilt but that I wanted to do all the sewing so that I could truly say that I had made the quilt myself.

            Michelle’s nursery has vinyl wall decals of trees and birds. I started looking online for bird fabric. Becky found one particular bird fabric that had the exact colors of Michelle’s nursery- turquoise, browns, orangy/reds. It was perfect and I fell in love with the simple style of the birds. We found corresponding fabric from that same line in a variety of patterns- argyle, polka dot, chevron, small striped, etc. I was in love. I looked at the bird fabric online every day, and showed everyone I worked with and told them that I was “making a crazy quilt”.

            Becky happened to go to a fabric store boutique near her house and found that they had just gotten a delivery that day, still wrapped up behind the counter, the fabric from my “Bermuda” line; with the exception of the brown argyle and the birds.  We ordered that fabric online.

            Side note: Becky & Monica’s baby quilts usually have hand stitched applique (technique used to decorate the surface of fabric by applying pieces of cut fabric on top of a layer of fabric by sewing or embroidering around the edges). They pick a theme, or design from the fabric they are using and add it to some of the squares to make the quilt tie together cute, and have a central theme. If that makes any sense? Since I was obsessed with the bird fabric, and birds are Michelle’s nursery theme, we decided to do bird applique. Becky and Monica are experts on applique technique, and did four birds each for me. Becky traced one of the birds from the fabric and enlarged it, and used that as a pattern for all eight. They did half in solid fabrics that matched and the other half in the striped fabric we had found from that same fabric line, so they matched the birds perfectly! I was so pleased with how the applique turned out, all hand sewn in some fancy fashion of turning the edges in/under.

            We then picked a day that all three of us weren’t working to start my quilt, which finding a day that worked for all of us was trickier than I thought.

            While I sewed squares and strips together, Monica and Becky were cutting the pieces and then handing them to me. We didn’t have a pattern we followed exactly, just used a previous quilt Becky had made as a guide. And a lot of it was decided as we went, which made it fun.

            It went a lot faster than I ever imagined thanks to Monica & Becky. If I’d attempted to do it on my own I would still be working on it when baby boy has his first birthday party. LOL.

            Once we finished the front of the quilt, and had the back piece all measured out and cut, we took it to a lady who does the quilting for Becky’s quilt. She has a huge long-arm quilting machine that can do a million designs/patterns. We looked through design books and I found a cute/simple design.

            It didn’t take her too long to do the quilting. Once I got it back I had to hand sew the binding around the edge.

            Now I kind of want to take up quilting… once I’m done with nursing school of course.

            I love how it turned out. Hopefully baby Jamison loves it as well.

Becky, Monica, and me with the quilt when it was partway done.

Love these fabrics!

Monica helping cut the fabric strips

Before I added the argyle border

after the argyle border was added

the design I choose at the quilters, there were SO many to choose from but  I wanted something simple

the quilt before it got quilted- and before the binding was hand sewn around the edges.

the professional quilter's fancy HUGE long armed machine and spools and spools of thread. Quite the business.

Side note:

I forgot to take a picture of the finished quilt before I gave it to Michelle, so I'll have to add that later, because it looks SO cute all complete with the cute polka dot binding that I hand sewed on once I got it back from the quilters.