Kids' Quilts

The quilt is approximately a yard wide and a yard long. This corresponds with an old tradition of giving a new baby a yard of cloth. The project was the result of a class in machine quilting, and it won a blue ribbon at our local county fair in 1998. Here's a closeup of part of it:

And now for a photo of the quilt in use! Our beautiful grandson was born on January 13, 1999, at 12:32 PM. He weighed 7 pounds, 2 ounces and was nineteen inches long. This picture was taken when Benjamin III (he was named for his daddy and his paternal grandfather) was just three days old! Isn't he wonderful?

This quilt was made for our younger daughter's first baby, Andrew Michael. He was born on February 24, 2001, and was 7 lbs., 6 oz. and 19" long. The quilt was partially complete before his birth, but I had to wait to finish it until we knew whether he was a "he" or a "she" and his other vital statistics. The pattern came from the book P.S. I Love You Two!, and it's about 30" x 36".

This is a detail of some of the fun free-motion machine quilting I did on the quilt.

And here is Andrew with his quilt!

This is a rather untraditional baby quilt, made for Benjamin's brother, Dominic Easton. He was born right on his due date, April 9, 2001 -- a very cooperative baby! He weighed 6 lbs., 15 oz., and was 19" long. This is a plaid pattern I took from a pattern by Debbie Caffrey, and it's machine pieced and machine quilted. The machine quilting is a combination of straight lines along the plaid lines and hearts in some of the plain squares. The border has a pattern of adjoining hearts. The quilt is approximately 44" square.

Here's a picture of part of the back, where you can see the border quilting if you try very hard and squint just right! ;)

And, finally, here is Dominic with his quilt.

This isn't exactly a baby quilt, but it is for my grandchildren. After I made it, my daughters and I decided that it would live at my house for the children to play with when they visit. This pattern is taken from Ami Simms' book, Picture Play Quilts, and measures approximately 45" x 60". The quilt is machine pieced and machine quilted in loopy swirls that just miss the dimensional green and white diamond shapes between each block. Each block is, of course, different so that the children can play I Spy games with the quilt.

It suddenly became obvious that our grandson Benjamin had outgrown his baby quilt and that I needed to make him a new one quickly! Fortunately, I remembered that I'd purchased and stashed a pre-printed I Spy panel several months before -- just in case. To that center panel I added borders of black with red polka dots and binding of red with black polka dots. I even found flannel for the back in black with tiny red polka dots.

 
 

Then I used bright variegated thread to machine quilt around the printed motifs in the center and to do loops in the plain red border. The same thread was used to do more straight lines in the outer border.

The quilt was ready in time for Benjamin's third birthday in January, 2002, and measures 40 1/2" x 48 1/2".

Our fourth grandson arrived in late June, 2004, so I made him a quilt. Yes, it's hot in the Las Vegas area in the summer, but I figure he'll use the quilt the following fall and winter. ;) This is made from a panel for a baby quilt that two friends from England and I bought while they were visiting here in 2002. Both of them made their panels into quilts ages ago, and I've finally done this one, too. The panel comes from a South Seas Islands line of fabrics called Once Upon a Time.

I used the Twist and Turn technique to set the blocks from the panel, and then surrounded then with more of the same fabric as a border, with pinwheel blocks at intervals. I used purple thread to free-motion machine quilt this with loops, stars and hearts in the sashings and borders, and I outline quilted many of the motifs in the blocks with the same purple. Here's a detail where you can see a bit of the quilting:

The quilt measures 35" x 41 1/2" and was finished in March, 2004, in plenty of time for the baby. :)

Just as it suddenly became obvious a couple of years earlier that Benjamin needed a "big boy" quilt to take to preschool, Andrew and Dominic also needed the same sort of thing! I had foreseen this, however, when I bought the preprinted panel for Benjamin's quilt; I'd bought two more of the same panel at the same time. So now those two have become nap quilts for preschool, too. :) The center panels are identical, but I used different border fabrics and quilting motifs. Here is Andrew's quilt:

Andrew loves big trucks, so the border fabric seemed a good choice for him, and I used variegated thread to do lines of cars and trucks in the red border. It measures about 41" x 50".

Dominic's quilt is similar:

I used the same thread to do rows of five-pointed stars in the border of this one. The quilt measures approximately 41" x 49", and both quilts were finished in June, 2004. They were both machine pieced (just adding borders) and machine quilted.

Now my second grandson (seven years old -- this is becoming a tradition) has spent the day -- August 2, 2008) doing what his cousin did two years previously! He selected cowboy fabric and made a similar placemat, though the pocket for the chalk doesn't show very well in the photo, since we made it from matching fabric, rather than contrasting. He did the entire thing on my Bernina, though I slowed the speed way down and added a finger guard to the presser foot -- for my peace of mind as well as his. ;) I did the cutting and the top stitching, and he did the rest -- and what a great job he did! :D

This quilt is for our first granddaughter! :) I'd purchased the fabric for this several years ago, but it was too feminine for the four grandsons who arrived in the meantime. As soon as we found out that the next grandchild was to be a girl, I dug out the fabric and started the quilt. I machine pieced it and machine quilted it with lots of hearts and flowers. I finished it in February, 2007 (the baby was due in May <g>), and it measures approximately 39" x 48". Details of the quilting are below.

Gabriella Jacquelyn arrived on May 1, 2007, weighing 5lbs 7oz. Here's a picture of our new granddaughter at two weeks old, resting on her quilt:

This is a quilt I made for a very special former student's first baby. It's paper pieced from a pattern in Carol Doak's book Easy Paper-Pieced Baby Quilts. It is completely machine pieced and quilted, and it measures approximately 36" square. I finished it in December, 2008, just in time for the baby's January birth. 

Here is a detail of some of the machine quilting:

I did a lot of free-motion quilting, outlining all of the motifs in the panel and adding some clouds and leaves in some empty spots. Then I quilted feathers all around the borders.

               

The quilt measures approximately 31.5" x 50", and I finished it in February, 2010.