Summer of a Thousand (or 4) Quilts

Considering how quiet this blog has been, I've actually finished quite a few quilts this year already. I'm pretty proud of myself for finishing them all (somewhat) on time! Unfortunately, I was not so good about taking pictures. I mean, I did TAKE pictures of all of the quilts, they just weren't the best. For the most part, they have been hastily snapped immediately before they were gifted, handed off or mailed. That is one of my resolutions, to take better pictures of my makes. (Can you have a resolution in the middle of the year? I think so.) I put so much effort in, I really should have a beautiful record of them!

Anyway, here is one of the two baby quilts I completed this summer. This first one was for a baby boy. I have been trying to use up some of my fabric stash, so luckily I had a charm pack of Max and Whiskers by Basicgrey that had been sitting around awhile. I used a broken nine patch pattern with a big border of black essex yarn dyed linen (also from the stash). I gave the linen 1/2" seams and reinforced them with zigzags, as I've heard linen in a quilt can really fall apart with time.

I backed the quilt with white minky for the softness factor. I had originally planned on using some cute paw print minky I found at Jo-Ann's for the back, but then I found out one of the parents is actually afraid of dogs. Hmm. Since I had already pieced the top with fabric containing dogs (and cats and bunnies and fish), I just nixed the paw print backing. I couldn't find minky that matched the colors on the top close enough for my satisfaction, so white it was. That plus the 3-colored binding (woo hoo, more stash fabric!) really brightened the whole quilt up, so overall I'm really happy with how it turned out. I also used basting spray, which made a HUGE difference in the whole process of quilting with minky. No shifting at all! This quilt definitely put minky back in my repertoire.

And here's one last totally awful shot. At least you can see the (blurry) animals. I quilted in the ditch for the center, and you can juuuust see the zigzag quilting on the border seam. Just to add one more layer of stability for shifty ol' linen.