Star Baby, Star Baby!

Quite a few friends are having babies in the coming months. I am really happy because I know how excited my friends are, but also because it means I get to make some new baby quilts!

I have been away from my blog for almost two months, what with work, life, and a few other unexpected events. But I have been busy, designing and sewing, and over the coming weeks, I hope to have a few more quilts to show you.

I made this quilt for a little boy who was born at the end of June. I wanted to make star blocks, and this time, unlike the Aurora Quilt, I wanted to use more complex blocks. I found a fabulous paper piecing template with very clear instructions on Faith Jones' lovely Fresh Lemons blog (I am a regular reader of her blog and recommend it to anyone interested in modern quilting). 

I used a grey solid and a selection of bright prints for the stars. All the fabric was from my stash and I used scraps from the print fabric to do the binding. I quilted in straight lines with a cross hatch pattern in the middle.

Here it is on our lawn, being modelled by one of our cats. I decided to let her be featured in this post because I have recently read quite a few blog posts where quilters have mentioned their cats. For some reason, a lot of quilters seem to be cat people!

The Aurora Quilt

This is another quilt using a traditional block. I have tried to keep it modern and fresh with bright solids.

I needed to make a naptime quilt for my elder son to use at kindergarten. I wanted something combining a dark blue solid and starry prints to represent peaceful sleep with bright, child-friendly colours. And so I made what I now call the "Aurora" quilt! This is another more traditional block quilt, made using the John Q. Adams' (aka Quilt Dad) "spinning star" block from Fat Quarterly's Shape Workshop book.  I used up various star-themed prints from my stash and a range of Kona solids. The dark blue is Kona Nightfall and the bright solids are mainly from a Kona "Top 20" colours layer cake, with a few others thrown in for variety. I am really happy with how it has turned out. I took this picture in our pre-lawn garden. I had to wash the quilt anyway, so it did not matter that it got a bit dirty during the shoot!

I quilted the Aurora quilt on my Bernina Aurora 430 (hehehe!). I did dense parallel straight lines on the dark blue, and some single straight lines on the other fabric. If I'd have had a bit more time, I think I would have done more quilting. Lessons learnt during this project - I forgot to square up some of the blocks earlier on, so a few points don't quite line up as I would have liked. I won't make that mistake again!