Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Helpful How-To: Baby Blanket in Motion

I got an itch....

A crafting/I'm-on-have-a-baby-so-I-have-an-excuse-to-sew itch.

And this is where it begins.

Ok, so this isn't exactly where it began.

It began somewhere else, with me cutting about 200 squares of unnecessary fabric

Because it's fun, right?

Right.

But in turn, I was left with enough squares to make this happen.



In case you don't know what you are looking at, it's the top of a baby quilt.

Which is super simple to do.

This one is made up 49 of 6" x 6" squares.

24 solid colored (or in this case - boring white) squares.

And 25 coordinating print squares.

You can lay out your rows how ever you want.

But I chose a less than random pattern for mine.

I'm a bit OCD if you hadn't picked up on that....

But I personally love it.

When it came time to sew, I stacked my fabric by rows then could just grab from the stack to add on my next piece.

The only part that can get confusing is when you sew a patterned square onto an unpatterned square (also known as every other square, LOL!).

Because it becomes a little more difficult to decipher "right sides" in order to sew "right sides together".

You'll just want to double check yourself before you start sewing. 

And possibly, keep your seam ripper nearby.

When you finish sewing all of your stacks together, you will be left with 7 rows of 7 squares.

Before moving to your next step, you will want to flip your newly sewn rows over and iron all the seams flat.

Then you will start pinning rows together.

A row of 3 patterned should be pinned (right sides together) to a row of 4 pattered (see pic again for reference) lining up seams, and sew. 

Turn over and iron the new long seam flat.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Six more times.

Which should leave you with something like this.



For those of you with little sewing experience, this is an EXCELLENT starter project.

Because it's all straight lines.

And here's a challenge for me.

To see if I can keep you posted on the progress of this project....

Because there is obviously more to a baby quilt than just a top.

Which means that I have some serious work cut out for me!

Wish me luck!!!

2 comments:

BumbersBumblings said...

It's gonna be awesome!! I'm really jealous of your quilting skill, but more so your discipline in following through on things.

Allison Tomasek said...

That is going to be beautiful! I would totally love to learn how to sew just as soon as I figure out how to thread the needle on my "beginner" Brother sewing maching. Oh and I thread a horrible bobbin. I mean my sewing skills are so bad that whilst trying to 'load' or 'spin' or whatever it is you do to a bobbin, it became such a hotmess my mom and I laughed till we peed and then a lot longer since it only takes us a couple of seconds to laugh until..well, you know what I mean!! :)

So glad I found your blog!!